Los Amantes de Teruel | Page 6

his mortal remains were conducted to the tomb with all due ceremony by the Spanish Academy, to which membership had been granted him in 1847 as a recognition of his excellent work as dramatist and scholar.
The productivity of Hartzenbusch, as well as his versatility, would be remarkable in any country but Spain. The Bibliografía de Hartzenbusch, prepared by his son and published in 1900,[3] stands as proof of the great extent and diversity of his productions; four hundred pages are needed for the bibliographical data connected with his many publications and for a few extracts from his unpublished writings. Hundreds of titles of dramas, poems, addresses, essays, literary criticism, scholarly commentaries, indicate the versatility of his talent and his tireless industry.
[Footnote 3: Bibliografía de Hartzenbusch. Eugenio Hartzenbusch. Madrid, 1900.]
#V. Hartzenbusch's Treatment of the Legend.# Apparently Hartzenbusch had given much study and thought to the famous legend of the Lovers of Teruel. At first it was his intention to use it in an historical novel, but only the first few pages of this have been preserved (Bibliografía de Hartzenbusch). Believing that the legend could be better treated in dramatic form, he applied himself enthusiastically to the construction of the play in accordance with the new theories that were becoming popular, and had it ready for production when a copy of José de Larra's Macías came into his hands. What was his astonishment to find that the plot of his play was so similar to that of Macías that no one would be likely to accept the similarity as a mere coincidence. Patiently he reconstructed it and had it published in 1836, if the date on the title page of the oldest edition is to be accepted as accurate.[4] If published in 1836, the author remained in obscurity until the first performance of the play, January 19 of the following year, made him famous.
[Footnote 4: Los Amantes de Teruel, drama en cinco actos en prosa y verso por Juan Eugenio Hartzenbusch. Madrid. Imprenta de D. José María Repullés. 1836.]
Many difficulties beset the dramatist in the construction of the play. The legend that served as plot was already known to all, so that the element of suspense could not be used to any great extent. Moreover, the climax was not in itself dramatic; the death of two lovers through grief at separation, pathetic though it be, lacked the tragic element of other similar stories in which death resulted from violence. The dénouement, the probability of which would not be generally accepted, had to be retained in the treatment of a legend so widely known, a legend in which the essential originality consisted in this very improbability. Careful preparation throughout the whole play was needed, then, for this improbable dénouement, pathetic, rather than tragic; dramatic incidents had to be supplied by the author's own inventiveness, the characters had to be carefully delineated, the motivation carefully considered. How successfully the author was able to overcome these difficulties, with what dramatic skill he was able to succeed where dramatists such as Tirso de Molina and Montalbán were only partially successful, careful study of the play will reveal.
The play as given in this edition differs in many ways from the play as first presented in 1837. More than once the author returned to it, and the numerous editions needed to supply the popular and continuous demand gave him the opportunity to revise it and give it the most artistic finish of which he was capable. Changed literary conditions after Romanticism had run its course are reflected in the more sober dress of the revised play; there are reflected in it, too, the greater restraint, the more scholarly and critical attention to character delineation and literary finish befitting a man who had passed from the warm impulsiveness of youth to the calm rationality of middle age. The student who takes the trouble to compare the text of this edition with that of the first will see many changes: the five acts are reduced to four; some of the prose scenes are now in poetic form; the diction is much improved generally and obscure passages are made clear; some changes in motivation are to be noted, especially in the scenes leading up to the voluntary marriage of Isabel with Azagra; the mother's character is notably ennobled. On the whole, the play has gained by these revisions; what it has lost in freshness and spontaneity has been more than counterbalanced by the more careful delineation of character, improved motivation of action, correctness of diction, and literary finish. The play in its first form is undoubtedly a better example of Romanticism in all its phases, its tendencies toward exaggeration, its crudities of thought and expression, combined with qualities unsurpassed in any other period of literature; in its revised form it is