Zorrilla y Moral, José

Zorrilla y Moral, José (hōsā` thôrē`lyä ē mōräl`), 1817–93, Spanish poet and dramatist. His works and life epitomized the brief period of Spanish romanticism. One of the most honored of Spanish writers, he was nevertheless continually impoverished. Among his many plays Don Juan Tenorio (1844) is a Spanish favorite, as is El zapatero y el rey [the shoemaker and the king] (1840–42). He gathered and reconstructed many legends in Cantos del trovador (1841), Granada (1852), and other volumes of verse and also wrote an interesting autobiography (1880–83).