ABSTRACT
Martinez de la Rosa gave Spain its introduction to the Romantic drama, and the Duke of Rivas established it firmly with his brilliant Don Alvaro. Angel de Saavedra, later Duke of Rivas had fought valiantly against the French. El moro exposito, o Cordoba y Burgos en el siglo decimo, which recounts the old legend of Mudarra the Bastard and the Infantes de Lara. It is a lengthy poem in romance heroico. One may naturally bracket with Rivas Mariano Roca de Togores, Marques de Molins who also cut an important figure in politics and literature. Antonio Gil y Zárate, a politician, and, in 1844, director of Public Instruction, is the author of a Manual de literatura that enjoyed a long but undeserved success. Juan Eugenio Hartzenbusch, son of a German cabinet-maker, was a self-taught, industrious scholar; he earned a living as carpenter, then as stenographer. Antonio Garcia Gutierrez possessed a more vigorous dramatic temperament than Hartzenbusch, and a more ardent imagination.
