Leandro Fernández de Moratín

• Born: March 10, 1760
• Birthplace: Madrid, Spain
• Died: June 21, 1828
• Place of death: Paris, France

Other Literary Forms

Leandro Fernández de Moratín is chiefly recognized for his plays although he did contribute to the Spanish literary world a rather large and varied corpus of writings. He wrote much verse, most of which is undistinguished, although he did win honorable mention in a 1779 poetry contest held by the Spanish Royal Academy for a narrative poem La toma de Granada. Three years later, the Spanish Royal Academy again awarded him honorable mention for Lección poética: Sátira Contra los vicios introducidos en la poesía castellana, a satire on the literary vices of the day.

In 1798, he undertook a translation of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (pr. c. 1600-1601). Although his command of English was not perfect, his prose translation was probably the best in a Romance language up to that time. Moratín also translated two comedies by Molière: in 1812, L’École des maris (pr., pb. 1661; The School for Husbands, 1732) and in 1814, Le Médecin malgré lui (pr., pb. 1666; The Doctor in Spite of Himself, 1672). Unlike his translation of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, these are free adaptations that stray considerably from the original but refrain from deforming them. Moratín was a great admirer of the French dramatist, from whom he learned to avoid the unbelievable series of mistaken identities and circumstances found in earlier comedies and to focus on the true nature and emotions of his fellow human beings. He may well have had another motive for translating French plays, however, since they were both staged after the French invasion, when Spain was ruled by King Joseph Bonaparte. Late in life, perhaps when he had lost the illusions and optimism of his youth, he finished a translation of Voltaire’s Candide: Ou,L’Optimisme (1759; Candide: Or,All for the Best, 1759). Moratín’s translation of the famous satiric tale appeared posthumously in 1838.

In 1789, he published a prose satire, La derrota de los pedantes, which achieved considerable renown. In 1812, he edited a seventeenth century account of an auto-da-fé that had taken place in the year 1610. Moratín’s contribution consists primarily of notes that ridicule, in a Voltairean fashion, the absurdities of the investigation and condemnation of witches.

After leaving Madrid in 1812, he resumed the task of writing a history of the Spanish theater. Moratín worked on this study periodically throughout his life and left in manuscript form the Orígenes del teatro español (1830), which was published by the Academy of History. This history was the first significant study of the theater before Lope de Vega Carpio. In addition to the valuable essay, it contains a catalogue of plays and an anthology. Elsewhere, he treated other periods so that his total work on this subject forms a survey of the Spanish theater to his own time. Two intriguing works by Moratín are his Diario (1968) and his Epistolario (1973). Moratín was a rather shy bachelor, but his Diario and correspondence reveal a merry, lively facet of his personality.

Achievements

It is remarkable that Leandro Fernández de Moratín, despite writing only five original comedies, is a major figure of the Spanish theater. His scant production appears insignificant, for example, when compared to the 80 and 113 plays written, respectively, by his contemporaries Antonio Valladares y Sotomayor and Luciano Comella y Villamitjana. Moratín, however, had a lasting impact on generations of Spanish dramatists, who admired his command of language, his carefully structured plots, and his good taste. The result was that his plays served as models for several generations of playwrights. In fact, he has been called the most influential dramatist in Spanish literature next to Lope de Vega.

Moratín merits being placed in the same category with the greatest genius of the Spanish stage because of his signal contributions to the reform of the Spanish theater. The great aesthetic concern of the eighteenth century was the reformation of the theater, and Moratín, primarily through La comedia nueva and When a Girl Says Yes, gave a new direction to the theater just as Lope de Vega had done in the previous century with his comedia. With La comedia nueva, which mocked a popular but decadent genre, Moratín played a crucial role in convincing playwrights to turn from an inferior form of the heroic comedy. When a Girl Says Yes was a resounding success and provided playwrights with a model for a type of play that achieved great popularity in the decades that followed. So great was the success of this type of play that historians of literature speak of the School of Moratín to describe the dramatists who followed Moratín’s path in creating plays dealing with simple problems about ordinary people. They learned from Moratín that such a play could maintain the interest of a large public while moving them to both laughter and tears. From this point onward, the Spanish theater took a direction that the intense but brief reign of Romanticism did not fundamentally alter. Since Moratín, the realistic, middle-class drama has dominated the Spanish stage.

Moratín was an innovative dramatist because he gave his comedies a sentimental and tearful tone. He presented the ridiculous or laughable side of life while also creating lovers who touched the hearts of the spectators. Moratín was an acute observer of his contemporaries, observing with humor or irony the foibles of human nature. He held up a mirror to the middle class while teaching a moral lesson. His portrayal of ordinary people and simple events is characterized by a concern for detail, usually associated with the realists of the nineteenth century.

Moratín’s themes reflect the spirit of the time. For example, they appear in the paintings and etchings of his friend Francisco de Goya. Their contrasting personalities, however, caused a marked difference in treatment. Goya’s pessimism produced grotesque caricatures whereas Moratín’s plays have a strong note of sentimentality and optimism. Moratín avoids Goya’s bitter irony and treats his characters with a softer touch. Another important contribution of Moratín to the Spanish stage was his establishment of higher technical standards. He participated actively in the rehearsals of his plays to correct the unprofessional attitude of some actors and directors. In 1799, when La comedia nueva was in production, he made seven demands concerning the actors and actresses, the rehearsals, sets, and costumes, which were granted him by the Judge Protector of the Theaters of Madrid. His desire for high quality productions was an important part of the theater reform of the period.

Biography

Leandro Fernández de Moratín was born in Madrid on March 10, 1760, into a prominent literary family. Though Nicolás, his father, never achieved the distinction of his son, he enjoyed considerable stature in the literary circles of his time. The lives of the Moratíns, father and son, span the period of neoclassicism in Spain. Nicolás was born in 1737, the year that marked the beginning of the neoclassical period in Spain with the publication of Ignacio de Luzán y Claramunt’s Poética. By 1760, when the father was beginning his career in Madrid, the neoclassical movement was receiving official support, and when Nicolás died in 1780, the son, Leandro, was ready to continue the family tradition, which he did until his death in 1828.

Living during the height of neoclassicism in Spain, Moratín gave this movement some of its greatest successes. His theater represents a continuation and improvement of the efforts of his father. Like his father, Moratín had an extremely facile wit His distrust of this gift, however, explains why he wrote only five original comedies. He had deep reservations concerning prolific authors, for he believed that “to write a lot is to write badly.” Moratín was probably influenced by Luzán’s belief that good dramatists limit their production to a few carefully written plays. The classical dictum to polish a work through much study and effort was not lost on Moratín.

Moratín’s father was a jeweler for the royal family, and he encouraged his son to take up that profession, knowing how difficult it was to earn a living as a writer. Moratín followed his father’s advice and worked as a jeweler from 1780, the year of his father’s death, until about 1786. In that year, Moratín’s commitment to the theater became obvious, for he read his first play, El viejo y la niña, to a Madrid theatrical company. Despite his obvious predilection, he was named secretary to a prominent Spanish banker, whom he accompanied to France. While there, he wrote a verse play entitled The Baron. In 1789, he took minor religious orders, becoming an abbé.

Between 1792 and 1796, Moratín lived in various European countries, first traveling to France under the auspices of the government. Because of the chaos and violence in France, he fled to England, where he stayed for almost two years. After studying English and the English drama, particularly the works of William Shakespeare, he traveled through Flanders, Germany, and Switzerland en route to Italy, where he lived from 1793 to 1796. He returned to Spain in 1796 and became active in the theater. From 1797 until 1811, Moratín was a government official in charge of an office providing the public with certified translations of a commercial and legal nature. In 1808, he fled the oncoming French troops of Napoleon Bonaparte, but later he returned and was named Royal Librarian by Joseph Bonaparte. In 1812, he fled Madrid with the retreating French troops, never to return. He spent the following years in both Spain and France, where he died in 1828.

Analysis

The foundation of Leandro Fernández de Moratín’s theory of comedy was neoclassical; therefore, he wrote his comedies following Aristotelian and Horatian tenets, with modifications based on the innovations of some of his contemporaries, such as Denis Diderot. Moratín defined comedy as an imitation in dialogue of an action occurring in one place and within a few hours, among people of the middle class. He also believed that comedy should have a moral aim; it should ridicule the vices and errors of society and recommend truth and virtue. To understand Moratín’s theater fully, it is necessary to recognize his desire to achieve verisimilitude. He was able to attain naturalness in language, the characters, exits and entrances, and other details of the structure because he had a profound understanding of the customs and psychology of his countrymen. While admiring the universal values of neoclassicism, he firmly believed that a Spanish play had to be “clothed in a mantilla and a basquine skirt”; that is, it had to adapt cosmopolitan theories and traditions to contemporary Spanish society.

El viejo y la niña

Moratín’s first produced play, El viejo y la niña, contains ideas that concerned him throughout his career: the education and general upbringing of women. Moratín, a lifelong bachelor, defended the right of women to be free of domineering relatives and to seek a satisfying emotional life. El viejo y la niña presents the unfortunate situation of a girl of nineteen married to a seventy-year-old widower. Isabel, an orphan, marries after believing that the young man whom she loved was obliged to marry another woman. Later, the young people learn that they had been duped. Realizing the hopelessness of their situation, the young man prepares to leave for America. Meanwhile, the jealous husband plots to spy on his wife, a decision that brings about his ruin, for Isabel discovers his plan and decides to enter a convent.

This seemingly innocent play caused Moratín considerable problems. The censors apparently could not condone Moratín’s treatment of marriage, for they mutilated the play by cutting lines so that the dialogue became meaningless. Finally, in 1790, a license to perform the play was granted, probably through the influence of Manuel Godoy, who was later to be a favorite of the king and queen and a minister of the government.

El viejo y la niña is a well-constructed play that follows the unities of time, place, and action. The exposition of the conflict is rapid and amusing. The scene in which Don Roque forces his servant to hide under the sofa in order to spy on the young couple is excellent farce. The sad denouement carries the message by demonstrating both the lamentable results of an unequal marriage based on a deception and the fate of those who allow themselves to marry someone other than the one they love.

La comedia nueva

After the great achievements of Lope de Vega, Pedro Calderón de la Barca, and other dramatists of the seventeenth century, the Spanish theater lost momentum. In the eighteenth century, dramatists continued the patterns of the previous epoch or imitated neoclassical dramatists of other nations. In this period of limited experimentation, Spanish theatergoers were enthralled with plays that emphasized elaborate stage machinery. The heroic comedia became increasingly popular, and the parodic play within La comedia nueva gives one an idea of the overblown language and unrealistic action typical of that genre.

La comedia nueva, first performed in February, 1792, is a satire on dramatic criticism. It is a play about the foibles of an aspiring playwright, his family, and his friends, who are taught a lesson in accordance with the tradition of the neoclassical comedy. Encouraged by his wife and a pedantic friend, who presumes to be a literary critic, the young protagonist of La comedia nueva, Eleuterio, writes a drama in the popular style of the day. This play, El gran cerco de Viena, opens with the grandiose entrance of the Emperor of Poland, other notables, ladies, and horsemen. The Emperor describes the siege of Vienna by the Turks and how his people have been reduced to eating rats, toads, and filthy insects. The remainder of the play is a series of melodramatic scenes: a lady dying of hunger after refusing to be the Vizier’s concubine, a storm, a prayer by the Vizier to his idols, a dance, a funeral, and so on. Finally, on the entrance of a hungry mother and crying child, the public refuses to tolerate any more and creates such a turmoil that the curtain is lowered permanently on El gran cerco de Viena.

In contrast to Eleuterio’s play, the action of La comedia nueva is extremely simple. The aspiring playwright, his family, and friends have lunch shortly before the performance of El gran cerco de Viena. They arrive only in time to observe the disastrous ending of the play because the watch of the playwright’s pedantic friend had stopped. The audience’s reaction to his play, as well as the advice of the elderly Don Pedro, convince the aspiring dramatist that talent, dedication, and knowledge are necessary in order to write for the theater.

Moratín denied having any specific models for his satire. Nevertheless, some believe a priest, Cristóbal Cladera, to be the model for the pedantic critic, who is one of Moratín’s outstanding creations, and Luciano Comella y Villamitjana to be the inspiration for the aspiring playwright. Comella y Villamitjana, a prolific dramatist of the time, believed that he was the object of the satire and appealed unsuccessfully to the authorities to suppress the play.

The Baron

The Baron is set in a bourgeois household of a widow who is being duped by an impostor who is seeking her money and her daughter. The foolish mother is determined that her daughter will marry the baron rather than the handsome, wealthy young villager whom she loves. Because this is a comedy, the fraudulent baron is finally unmasked and the two young lovers marry. The baron’s machinations are so ridiculous that even the widow eventually sees through them and learns that her pride and envy almost made her fall into the impostor’s trap. Clearly, the play conveys the conservative message that one should not strive to escape from one’s social class, particularly through marriage. Moratín also returned in this play to his attacks against the venality and the abuse of marriage. The reviews of The Baron were mixed, but the opening run of the play was quite a box-office success. An interesting sidelight to The Baron is the fact that, sixteen years before its premiere, Moratín had written a very similar musical play with the same title to please the count of Cabarrus, a banker for whom he worked.

La mojigata

Moratín’s fourth play, La mojigata, had its premiere in May, 1804, fifteen months after The Baron, even though he had written a first version as early as 1791. The title signifies an individual who feigns humility in order to achieve her end. The author included in the first edition of the play a Latin maxim: “When a bad man pretends to be good, he is then worse.” This saying applies to Clara, whose father has reared her in a very strict fashion. He believes Clara to be a devout and obedient daughter who wishes to renounce her inheritance and enter the convent. In contrast to Clara is her cousin Inés, reared by a permissive father who concludes that his method is superior when he observes Clara’s deceitfulness. The action of the play explains how the clever Clara gets her comeuppance when a rich relative, hearing that she intends to enter the convent, gives his money to her cousin. Inés, however, decides to share her fortune with Clara, and conditions are established so that Clara will have to reform her character, as will her future husband, Claudio, a dissipated and dishonest young man. Contemporary critics disagreed on certain aspects of the play. One believed that Clara’s vice was not sufficiently perverse and that the dissipated young gallant and his servant were morally worse than Clara. In response, another critic wrote that Moratín’s intention was not to attack hypocrisy but to make his audience aware of the effects of the improper training of children.

When a Girl Says Yes

Moratín’s fifth original play, When a Girl Says Yes, is generally considered his masterpiece. In the early 1790’s, Moratín had destroyed a play entitled “El tutor,” which may have been the embryo for When a Girl Says Yes. At any rate, by 1801, he had completed a version of When a Girl Says Yes that he read on several occasions to friends. In October, 1804, he read one act per day for three consecutive days in the home of the prime minister Manuel Godoy. In November of 1805, he read it to the company of actors of the Cruz theater in Madrid. The company later performed it on January 24, 1806.

When a Girl Says Yes is an extremely well-constructed play that served playwrights as a model of dramatic craftsmanship for many years. Like other Moratín plays, it provided instruction on being a parent or guardian. Moratín shows his concern over the deleterious results of the improper rearing of children.

The plot is simple. A widow, Doña Irene, wishes to marry her sixteen-year-old daughter to Don Diego, a wealthy gentleman of fifty-nine. Francisca, the young daughter, has led a sheltered life in a convent school, where she has been trained not to question authority. She is far from enthusiastic about her mother’s plan, because she has fallen in love with an army officer. She is not aware that the handsome young man is Diego’s nephew, Carlos. The intrigue is developed skillfully through misunderstanding and dramatic irony. The tension builds to a climax in the final act when the three principals despair of their situation. Don Diego has told his nephew to leave the city; Francisca is heartbroken over his departure; and the elderly suitor is hurt and jealous because another man loves his fiancée. Don Diego is a reasonable man, however, and the conflict is resolved happily for the young couple. As the spokesman of the play’s moral, he berates a society that encourages girls to hide innocent feelings and considers them “proper if they are expert in the art of silence and lying.” The action of the play conveys the message of the inappropriateness of a marriage between an elderly gentleman and a young girl and the failure of an education that makes young women hide their true emotions. The play’s appeal resides in part in the universality of the conflict between the values of parents and children and the idea of love conquering all. The mother, Doña Irene, is Moratín’s finest comic character, surpassing Don Hermógenes, the pedantic critic of La comedia nueva. She is a self-centered chatterbox who gives little thought to what she herself says, and less to others. She cannot pass up the opportunity to marry her only surviving daughter to the wealthy Don Diego. Doña Irene never changes; when she realizes that the nephew will receive his uncle’s money, her single-mindedness comes through as she quickly turns her attention to the young man and praises her daughter for her excellent choice of a husband.

When a Girl Says Yes was an extraordinary box-office success. At a time when an exceptional run of a new play was eight or ten nights, When a Girl Says Yes played for twenty-six successive nights, concluding its run on Ash Wednesday, when the theaters had to be closed for Lent. Its popularity was so great that the competing Caños del Peral Theater changed its bill ten times, finally presenting a spectacular show whose major attraction was a short play with four bulls. The play passed through a lengthy legal process before the authorities in both Madrid and Barcelona. In November, 1819, it was prohibited because of its disrespect for ecclesiastical matters and the education provided by religious schools. The play was Moratín’s fifth and final original play. He once wrote a friend that he would have written at least five or six more if he had not been subjected to such harassment. Indeed, it is known that after the attacks on When a Girl Says Yes, he destroyed some five or six uncompleted plays.

Bibliography

Deacon, Philip. Introduction to El sí de las niñas, by Leandro Fernández de Moratín. Newburyport, Mass.: Focus Information Group, 1995. In his introduction to Moratín’s When a Girl Says Yes, Deacon provides information on Moratín’s life and on the play. Bibliography.

Dowling, John. Leandro Fernández de Moratín. New York: Twayne, 1971. A biography of Moratín covering his works and life. Bibliography.

Dowling, John. “Moratín’s La comedia nueva and the Reform of the Spanish Theater.” Hispania. 53 (1970): 397-402. An analysis of the influence of Moratín’s play La comedia nueva on Spanish theater.