Born in Valladolid, Spain on February 21, 1817, José Zorrilla y Moral was educated at the Real Seminario de Nobles—a Jesuit school—and later at the universities of Toledo and Valladolid. Though Zorrilla’s father hoped his son would become a lawyer, Zorrilla left his studies and went to Madrid to pursue a career as a poet. In 1837 he became an overnight success after his dramatic recital of an elegy at the funeral of the essayist and satirist Mariano José de Larra. Witnesses claimed that Zorrilla actually leaped into the grave and stood on the coffin to deliver his reading. His first volume of verse, Poesias (1837), garnered him immediate acclaim and recognition as one of the primary voices in Spain’s Romantic movement. Between 1839 and 1849, Zorrilla composed 40 plays, including Don Juan Tenorio (1844), a version that parodies the old Don Juan legend. Although Zorrilla would later disparage Don Juan Tenorio as an unsuccessful youthful experiment, the play’s lyricism, colorful characters, and engrossing plot have made it a popular favorite, still performed in Spanish theaters each year on All Saints’ Day during the first week of November. The play’s rendition of the legendary Don Juan furthermore casts him in a modified mold, one emblematic of his Romantic age.
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