Leandro Fernández de Moratín

Leandro Fernández de Moratín (Madrid, 1760 – Paris, 1828) was the most prominent neoclassical playwright of the Spanish stage. He wrote comedies, translated foreign authors and cultivated poetry, but he is remembered mainly for his theatre, through which he sought to reform a popular drama he found chaotic. His career reflects the reformist ideas of the Spanish Enlightenment.

Son of the poet and dramatist Nicolás Fernández de Moratín, he grew up surrounded by literary conversation and early reading of the classics. He was first apprenticed to a jeweller, but by the age of nineteen he had won a prize from the Royal Spanish Academy with a heroic poem on the conquest of Granada. His patron Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos helped him travel to Paris in 1787, and later he toured England, the Low Countries, Germany, Switzerland and Italy. During those years he translated Hamlet, working mainly from French adaptations since his English was limited.

Back in Madrid he gained the favour of Manuel Godoy, who provided ecclesiastical income that let him devote himself to writing. His greatest triumph came in 1806 with El sí de las niñas, a comedy criticising marriages arranged between partners of very different ages. The fall of Godoy and the rise of Joseph Bonaparte, however, brought trouble: he was regarded as a supporter of the French, lost property, and after Ferdinand VII returned he had to give up playwriting and go into exile in France and Italy. He died in Paris in 1828.

His legacy lies in the clarity of his prose, his measured satire and his defence of reason against stale theatrical habits. His comedies stayed on Spanish stages for much of the nineteenth century, and he remains a key reference for Spanish Enlightenment drama.