1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Moratín, Leandro Antonio Eulogio Melitón Fernandez de

MORATÍN, LEANDRO ANTONIO EULOGIO MELITÓN FERNANDEZ DE (1760–1828), Spanish dramatist and poet, the son of N. F. de Moratín, was born at Madrid on the 10th of March 1760. Though his poetical tastes were early developed, his father apprenticed him to a jeweller. At the age of eighteen Moratín won the second prize of the Academy for a heroic poem on the conquest of Granada, and two years afterwards he attracted more general attention with his Lección poética, a satire upon the popular poets of the day. He was appointed secretary to Cabarrús on a special mission to France in 1787. On his return to Spain, Moratín was tonsured and presented to a sinecure benefice in the diocese of Burgos, and in 1786 his first play, El Viejo y la niña, was produced at the Teatro del Principe. Owing to the opposition of the clerical party, it was speedily withdrawn. The prose comedy, El Café ó la comedia nueva, given at the same theatre six years afterwards, at once became popular. On the fall of Florida Blanca, Moratín found another patron in Godoy, who provided him with a pension and the means for foreign travel; he accordingly visited England, where he began a prose translation of Hamlet, printed in 1798 but never performed. From England he passed to the Low Countries, Germany, Switzerland and Italy, and on his return to the Peninsula in 1796 was appointed official translator to the foreign office. In 1803 he produced El Barón in its present form; originally written (1791) as a zarzuela, it was shamelessly plagiarized by Andrés de Mendoza, but the recast, a far more brilliant work, still keeps the stage. It was followed in 1804 by La Mogigata, written between 1797 and 1803. This piece was favourably received, and an attempt to suppress it on religious grounds failed. Moratín’s crowning triumph in original comedy was El Sí de las Niñas (1806), which was performed night after night to crowded houses, ran through several Spanish editions in a year, and was soon translated into a number of foreign languages. In 1808 Moratín was involved in the fall of Godoy, but in 1811 accepted the office of royal librarian under Joseph Bonaparte—a false step, which alienated from him all sympathy and compelled him to spend his last years in exile. In 1812 his Escuela de los maridos, a translation of Molière’s École des maris, was produced at Madrid, and in 1813 El Médico á Palos (a translation of Le Médecin malgré lui) at Barcelona. From 1814 to 1828 Moratín lived in Italy and France, compiling a work on the early Spanish drama (Orígenes del teatro español). He died at Paris on the 21st of June 1828.

The most convenient edition of his works is that given in vol. ii. of the Biblioteca de autores españoles; this is supplemented by the Obras póstumas (3 vols., Madrid, 1867–1868).