Los Amantes de Teruel | Page 4

by a new treatment of the
old theme, and a new star of the literary firmament was recognized in

the person of Juan Eugenio Hartzenbusch. In his dramatic masterpiece
Hartzenbusch eclipsed all the other plays that have dealt with the
legend, and more than twenty editions stand as proof of its continued
popularity. Besides these many editions of the play, numerous novels,
poems, and operas have appeared from time to time. For the most
complete bibliography down to 1907 the reader is again referred to that
of the official historian of Teruel, Gascón y Guimbao. We must now
turn our attention to the author of the best dramatic treatment of the
legend.
#IV. Life of Hartzenbusch#. Juan Eugenio Hartzenbusch, born in 1806,
was the only son of a German cabinet-maker who had wandered to
Spain from his home near Cologne, married a Spanish girl, and opened
up a shop in Madrid. The son inherited from his German father and
Spanish mother traits of character that were exemplified later in his life
and writings. From his father he received a fondness for meditation,
conscientious industry in acquiring sound scholarship, and the patience
needed for the continual revision of his plays; from his mother came his
ardent imagination and love of literature. Childhood and youth were for
him a period of disappointment and struggle against adversity. Less
than two years old when his mother died after a short period of insanity
caused by the sight of bloodshed in the turbulent streets of Madrid in
1808, he was left to the care of a brooding father who had little
sympathy with his literary aspirations, but who did wish to give him the
best education he could afford. He received a common school
education and was permitted to spend the four years from 1818 to 1822
in the College of San Isidro. As a result of the political troubles in
Spain in 1823, the father's business, never very prosperous, fell away
and the son had to leave college to help in the workshop. He was thus
compelled to spend a large part of his time in making furniture,
although his inclination was toward literature.
His leisure was given to study and to the acquirement of a practical
knowledge of the dramatic art, gained for the most part from books,
because of his father's dislike of the theater and because of the lack of
money for any unnecessary expenditure. He translated several French
and Italian plays, adapted others to Spanish conditions, and recast

various comedias of the Siglo de Oro, with a view to making them
more suitable for presentation. He tried his hand also at original
production and succeeded in getting some of his plays on the stage,
only to have them withdrawn almost immediately. Undiscouraged by
repeated failure, he continued studying and writing, more determined
than ever to become a successful dramatist and thus realize the
ambition that was kindled in him by the first dramatic performance that
he had witnessed when he had already reached manhood.
At the time of his marriage in 1830 he was still helping his ailing and
despondent father in the workshop; more interested undoubtedly in his
literary pursuits, but ever faithful to the call of duty. Until success as a
dramatist made it possible for him to gain a living for his family by
literature, he continued patiently his manual labor. At his father's death
he closed the workshop and for a short time became dependent for a
livelihood on stenography, with which he had already eked out the
slender returns from the labor of his hands.
Meanwhile, during these last years of apprenticeship in which
Hartzenbusch was gaining complete mastery of his art by continual
study and practice, the literary revolution known as Romanticism was
making rapid progress. The death of the despotic Ferdinand VII in 1833
removed the restraint that had been imposed upon literature as well as
upon political ideas. The theories of the French and English
Romanticists were penetrating Spanish literary circles, to be taken up
eagerly by the younger dramatists; political exiles of high social and
literary prestige, such as Martínez de la Rosa and the Duque de Rivas,
were returning to Spain with plays and poems composed according to
the new theories; the natural reaction from the logical, unemotional
ideals of the Classicists was developing conditions favorable to the
revolution. The first year of the struggle between the two schools of
literature, 1834, gave the Romanticists two important victories in the
Conjuración de Venecia of Martinez de la Rosa, and the Macías of José
de Larra, two plays that show clearly Romantic tendencies but that
avoid an abrupt break with the Classical theories. They served to
prepare the way for the thoroughly Romantic play of the Duque de
Rivas, Don Álvaro o la