Drama:
Juan Dándolo, pb. 1830 (with Antonio García Gutiérrez)
Vivir loco y morir más, pb. 1837
Más vale llegar a tiempo que rondar un año, pb. 1839
Cada cual con su razón, pr. 1839
Ganar perdiendo, pb. 1839 (adaptation of Lope de Vega Carpio’s play La noche de San Juan)
Lealtad de una mujer: O, Aventuras de una noche, pr., pb. 1840
El zapatero y el rey, pr., pb. 1840 (part 1)
Apoteosis de don Pedro Calderón de la Barca, pb. 1840 (verse drama)
El zapatero y el rey, pr., pb. 1842 (part 2)
El eco del torrente, pr., pb. 1842
Los dos virreyes, pr., pb. 1842 (adaptation of Pietro Angelo Fiorentino’s novel El virrey de Nápoles)
Un año y un día, pr., pb. 1842
Sancho García, pr., pb. 1842
El caballo del rey don Sancho, pr., pb. 1843
El puñal del godo, pr., pb. 1843 (Dagger of the Goth, 1929)
Sofronia, pr., pb. 1843
La mejor razón, la espada, pb. 1843 (adaptation of Augustín Moreto y Cabaña’s play Las travesuras de Pantoja)
El molino de Guadalajara, pr., pb. 1843
La oliva y el laurel, pr., pb. 1843
Don Juan Tenorio, pr., pb. 1844 (English translation, 1944)
La copa de marfil, pr., pb. 1844
El alcalde Ronquillo: O, El diablo en Valladolid, pr., pb. 1845
El rey loco, pr., pb. 1847
La reina y los favoritos, pr., pb. 1847
La calentura, pr., pb. 1847 (part 2 of El Puñal del godo)
El excomulgado, pr., pb. 1848
Traidor, inconfeso y mártir, pr., pb. 1849
El cuento de las flores, pr., pb. 1864
El encapuchado, pr. 1866
Pilatos, pr., pb. 1877
Don Juan Tenorio, pr. 1877 (operatic version; music by Nicolás Manent)
Poetry:
Poesías de don José Zorrilla, 1837-1839 (6 volumes)
Cantos del trovador, 1840-1841 (3 volumes)
Vigilias del estío, 1842
Flores perdidas, 1843
Recuerdos y fantasías, 1844
La azucena silvestre, 1845
El desafío del diablo, 1845
Un testigo de bronce, 1845
María, 1850
Un cuento de amores, 1850 (with José Heriberto García de Quevedo)
Granada, 1852 (2 volumes)
Al-Hamar, el Nazarita, rey de Granada, 1853
La flor de los recuerdos, 1855-1859 (2 volumes)
El drama del alma, 1867
La leyenda del Cid, 1882
¡Granada mía!, 1885
Gnomos y mujeres, 1886
El cantar del romero, 1886
¡A escape y al vuelo!, 1888
De Murcia al cielo, 1888
Mi última breca, 1888
Nonfiction:
Recuerdos del tiempo viejo, 1880-1883 (3 volumes)
Miscellaneous:
Obras de Don José Zorrilla, 1847
Obras completas, 1943 (2 volumes)
José Zorrilla y Moral (zawr-REE-yah ee moh-RAHL) is representative of Spanish Romanticism not only in his writing but in his life. As a young man he was, despite parental opposition, lured from the study of law by his love for poetry. His marriage to a woman of whom his father disapproved widened the breach, and as a bohemian, he frequently lived in poverty. He was able, however, to visit France in 1846 to meet the leading poets of Paris and later to travel to Mexico at the request of Emperor Maximilian to direct the National Theater. He lived in Mexico from 1855 until 1866.
He became famous in 1837, when as a gaunt youth he leaped into the grave of the suicide Mariano José de Larra, a poet and journalist who wrote under the name Figaro, and read emotional verses about the loneliness of a poet and the sacredness of his mission. This act initiated fifty years of literary production. He became a member of the Royal Academy in 1848. His lyrical and dramatic poetry was characterized by themes of mystery, melancholy, and religion against a background of wild nature. Old legends provided him with themes, and he wrapped himself in the splendor of his country’s past.
Zorrilla was also the author of about twenty original dramas, all written with speed and facility and many patterned on the cloak-and-sword dramas of the Golden Age. His mastery of many verse forms established him as one of Spain’s leading poets, and in 1881, appropriately in Granada, he was proclaimed poet laureate of Spain. Don Juan Tenorio brought him his highest fame, though he called it “the greatest nonsense ever written.” In spite of its exaggerations, melodramatic improbability, and technical flaws, the drama expresses the spirit of Spanish Romanticism and is performed throughout the Spanish-speaking world on the first of November for the Day of the Dead. A good performance of it is an artistic delight. Many like to believe that the play dramatizes fundamental eternal truths and that the characters personify the inner duality of the earthy and spiritual elements inherent in human nature. Zorilla’s Don Juan, the archetypal Romantic hero, is saved by the pure love of his Inés.