MANUEL

See also:

• BRETON, BRITTON
• BRETON, JULES ADOLPHE

BRETON DE LOS HERREROS (1796—1873)  , Spanish dramatist, was born at Quel (Logrono) on the 19;.h of December 1796 and was educated at Madrid . Enlisting on the 24th of May 1812, he served against the French in Valencia and Catalonia, and retired with the rank of corporal on the 8th of March 1822 . He obtained a minor post in the civil service under the liberal government, and on his discharge determined to earn his living by writing for the stage . His first piece, A la vcjez viruelas, was produced on the 14th of October 1824, and proved the writer to be the legitimate successor of the younger Moratin . His industry was astonishing: between October 1824 and November 1828, he composed thirty-nine plays, six of them original, the rest being translations or recasts of classic master-pieces . In 1831 he published a translation of Tibullus, and acquired by it an unmerited reputation for scholarship which secured for him an appointment as sub-librarian at the national library . But the theatre claimed him for its own, and with the exception of Elena and a few other pieces in the fashionable romantic vein, his plays were a long series of successes . His only serious check occurred in 1840; the former liberal had grown conservative with age, and in La Ponchada he ridiculed the National Guard . He was dismissed from the national library, and for a short time was so unpopular that he seriously thought of emigrating to America; but the storm blew over, and within two years Bret6n de los Herreros had regained his supremacy on the stage . He became secretary to the Spanish Academy, quarrelled with his fellow-members, and died at Madrid on the 8th of November 1873 . He is the author of some three hundred and sixty original plays, twenty-three of which are in prose . No Spanish dramatist of the nineteenth century approaches him in comic power, in festive invention, and in the humorous presentation of character, while his metrical dexterity is unique .

Marcela o a cual de los

iris ? (1831), Muerete; y vends ! (1837) and La Escuela del matrimonio (1852) still hold the stage, and are likely to hold it so long as Spanish is spoken . See Marques de Molfns, Breton de los Herreros, recuerdos de su vida y de sus obras (Madrid, 1883) ; Obras de Breton de Herreros (5 vols., Madrid, 1883) ; E . Pineyro, El Romanticismo en Espana (Paris, 1904) . (J .