Los Amantes de Teruel | Page 5

of El Trovador, the Romantic play of García Gutiérrez, confirmed the victory gained by the Romanticists with Don álvaro, and gave clear indication that the literary revolution was complete. The temper of the time was decidedly Romantic, and the wholehearted applause that resounded through the Teatro del Príncipe on the night of Jan. 19, 1837, at the first performance of Los Amantes de Teruel put an end to the long and laborious apprenticeship of Hartzenbusch.
A few days later the warm reception given the play and its continued popularity were justified in a remarkable piece of dramatic criticism by the rival playwright and keen literary critic, José de Larra, known better by his journalistic pen-name, Fígaro, and greatly feared by his contemporaries for his mordant criticism and stinging satire. In the opening words of his review of the play, we may see the highly favorable attitude of the critic and realize the suddenness of the fame that came to Hartzenbusch. "Venir a aumentar el número de los vivientes, ser un hombre más donde hay tantos hombres, oír decir de sí: 'Es un tal fulano,' es ser un árbol más en una alameda. Pero pasar cinco o seis lustros oscuro y desconocido, y llegar una noche entre otras, convocar a un pueblo, hacer tributaria su curiosidad, alzar una cortina, conmover el corazón, subyugar el juicio, hacerse aplaudir y aclamar, y oír al día siguiente de sí mismo al pasar por una calle o por el Prado: 'Aquél es el escritor de la comedia aplaudida,' eso es algo; es nacer; es devolver al autor de nuestros días por un apellido oscuro un nombre claro; es dar alcurnia a sus ascendientes en vez de recibirla de ellos."[2] Other contemporary reviews were just as favorable, and all expressed with Fígaro great hopes in the career of a dramatist that had thus begun with an acknowledged masterpiece. The Semanario Pintoresco, for example, a literary magazine in its second year of publication, ended its review of the play with these words: "El joven que, saliendo de la oscuridad del taller de un artesano, se presenta en el mundo literario con los Amantes de Teruel por primera prueba de su talento, hace concebir al teatro espa?ol la fundada esperanza de futuros días de gloria, y de verse elevado a la altura que un día ocupó en la admiración del mundo civilizado." (Feb. 5, 1837.)
[Footnote 2: Obras completas de Fígaro. Paris, 1889. Vol. III, page 187.]
Thus encouraged by popular applause and by the enthusiastic praise of literary critics, Hartzenbusch produced at varying intervals many excellent plays, but none of them surpassed or even equaled his Amantes de Teruel. Many of them, characterized by careful workmanship, dramatic effectiveness, and fine literary finish, are well worth studying, and deserve more attention than can be given them here. They offer all kinds of drama: tragedies such as Do?a Mencía, in which the exaggerations of Romanticism are given free rein; historical plays, in which striking incidents in Spanish history or legend are given dramatic treatment; fantastic plays, such as La redoma encantada, in which magic plays an important part; comedies of character and manners, such as La coja y el encogido, in which contemporary life found humorous presentation. The best of them may be read in the three volumes published in the well-known series Colección de Escritores Castellanos. For literary criticism the student is referred to the books mentioned later in the bibliography.
The love of study grew stronger in Hartzenbusch as the opportunity to devote himself to it became greater, so that after he had had several plays presented with considerable success, scholarship began to absorb more and more of his time and the intervals between plays began to lengthen. Literary criticism, editorial work in connection with new editions of the Spanish classics, his duties as assistant and, later, chief librarian of the Biblioteca Nacional, these, with the production from time to time of a new play, made him a well-known figure in the literary life of Madrid. His was the quiet life of the modern man of letters, to whom the incidents of greatest interest are of the intellectual order: the production of a new play, the publication of a new book of literary or scholarly value, the discovery of an old manuscript or the announcement of a new theory, the admission of a new member to the Spanish Academy. Serenely tolerant in his outlook upon life, of gentle disposition and ready sympathy, unaffectedly modest, indifferent to the accumulation of property beyond the needs of his simple mode of living, conscientious in the performance of all his duties, he retained to the end of his life the personal esteem of his many friends. When death put an end in 1880 to the long illness that saddened the last years of his life,