Personal information

Surname: Rojas Zorrilla
First name: Francisco
Commonly known as: Rojas
Born: 10 April 1607, Toledo, Spain
Died: 23 January 1648

Biography

Francisco de Rojas Zorrilla was born in Toledo, Spain on 4 October 1607, and moved to Madrid when he was very young. His parents, Francisco Pérez de Rojas and Doña Mariana de Besga y Zorrilla, introduced him to the life of the court and also of the theatre, for his writing shows a familiarity with both realms from a young age. He collaborated with Calderón and Montalbán, Luis Vélez de Guevara and Mira de Amescua. There are records of his plays being performed as early as 1633, when his Persiles y Segismunda (based on Cervantes’ novel) was performed on 23February in El Pardo, for Felipe IV and his court. In the years 1635-6, 12 of his plays were performed in the theatres of the Palacio Real and the Buen Retiro, and on 4 February 1640, when the new royal entertainment space at the Buen Retiro was inaugurated, his play Los bandos de Verona was performed as part of the celebration. After 1640 his plays turn to a more religious vein. Like his contemporary, Calderón, he fought as a soldier in the war of Cataluña during the 1640s. Rojas had a daughter with the actress María de Escobedo, who took to the stage like her mother and became known as ‘la Bezona’. He was married to Catalina Yáñez Trillo de Mendoza in 1641 and had a son, Juan de Rojas, with her the following year. Interrupting the time of the playhouses closure in honour of royal mourning, Felipe IV allowed the celebration of Corpus Christi in 1647, and Rojas’s play El gran patio del palacio, the last play he wrote, was performed. He was a member of the Order of Santiago. His plays were published in two parts: in 1640 and 1645. He died on 23January 1648.

See Rojas Zorrilla 1976 and González Cañal 2003: 1149-50.

• González Cañal, Rafael. 2003. ‘Rojas Zorrilla’. In In Historia del teatro español, ed. Javier Huerta Calvo, pp. 1149-79. Madrid, Gredos (in Spanish)

• Rojas Zorrilla, Francisco de. 1976. Morir pensando matar; La vida en el ataúd, ed. Raymond R. MacCurdy , 2nd edn. Madrid, Espasa-Calpe (in Spanish)

Themes

Francisco de Rojas Zorrilla is known as a prodigious writer of comedies but less for his talent for tragedies, although he wrote in both modes; he also wrote some religious and mythological dramas. Although many writers of the Spanish Golden Age were predominantly concerned with depicting characters fighting against and within the honour code, Rojas Zorrilla updated this theme by often showing the conflict of the individual and society from a more human, personal point of view, dramatising the futility of railing against a harsh and impersonal social regime. In his comedies he regularly exposes the futility of rigid rules of decorum and honour. He is known as a proto-feminist writer for his championing of strong female characters, often showing ‘tyrannical’ fathers forcing their daughters to marry and the women’s independence in standing up to patriarchy. In his tragedies he tends to place his characters up against impossible odds and extreme situations (like Milene and Aglaes in La vida en el ataúd) and he is known for a density of plot (González Cañal 2003: 1153-5).

See González Cañal 2003: 1149-79.

• González Cañal, Rafael. 2003. ‘Rojas Zorrilla’. In In Historia del teatro español, ed. Javier Huerta Calvo, pp. 1149-79. Madrid, Gredos (in Spanish)

Style

Rojas Zorrilla collaborated with Calderón, and as such his plays are in the ‘neo-Lopean’ style typical of Calderón and his followers. The style of this ‘second generation’ includes greater attention to the dramatic unities of time, space and action than was popular with Lope de Vega’s drama.  It also uses fewer characters, frequent self-reference and metatheatre, and current events particular to the life of the society in which the author lived and wrote (Thacker 2007: 118). Rojas Zorrilla did not set out to revolutionise the prevailing dramatic formula, but offered slightly different or novel situations for his conventional plotlines to take place. He satirises the strict social codes of behaviour common to the noble and aspiring classes of his day, often using a complex poetic language typical of the flowery style of Góngora. Rojas Zorrilla was among the first to write a ‘comedia de figurón’, or a play featuring one predominantly exaggerated, larger-than-life character, such as Don Lucas in Entre bobos anda el juego (1638).

See González Cañal 2003 and Thacker 2007: 117-9.

• González Cañal, Rafael. 2003. ‘Rojas Zorrilla’. In In Historia del teatro español, ed. Javier Huerta Calvo, pp. 1149-79. Madrid, Gredos (in Spanish)

• Thacker, Jonathan. 2007. ‘Calderón and the Comedia’s Second Generation’. In A Companion to Golden Age Theatre, pp. 92-122. Woodbridge, Tamesis

Plays in the database

• La vida en el ataúd (?) / Life in the Coffin

Useful reading and websites

• Cotarelo y Mori, Emilio. 1911. Don Francisco de Rojas Zorrilla, noticias biográficas y bibliográficas. Madrid, Imprenta de la Revista de Archivos (in Spanish)

  This is the definitive study of Rojas’ biography.

• González Cañal, Rafael. 2003. ‘Rojas Zorrilla’. In In Historia del teatro español, ed. Javier Huerta Calvo, pp. 1149-79. Madrid, Gredos (in Spanish)

  For La vida en el ataúd specifically, see pp. 1173-4

• Gouldson, Kathleen. 1939. ‘Seventeenth-century Spain as Seen in the Drama of Rojas Zorrilla’, BSS, 16, 64,168-81

• MacCurdy, Raymond R. 1958. Francisco de Rojas Zorrilla and the Tragedy. Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press

• MacCurdy, Raymond R. 1968. Francisco de Rojas Zorrilla. New York, Twayne

• MacCurdy, Raymond R. 1979. ‘Rojas Zorrilla’s gracioso and the Renunciation of Honor’, Studies in Honor of Gerald E. Wade, pp. 167-77. Madrid, Porrúa

• MacCurdy, Raymond R. 1979. ‘Women and Sexual Love in the Plays of Rojas Zorrilla: Tradition and Innovation’, Hispania, 62, 255-65

• Rojas Zorrilla, Francisco de. 1976. Morir pensando matar; La vida en el ataúd, ed. Raymond R. MacCurdy , 2nd edn. Madrid, Espasa-Calpe (in Spanish)

• Shergold, Norman D. and John E. Varey. 1964. ‘A Problem in the Staging of autos sacramentales in Madrid, 1647-1648’, Hispanic Review, 32, 12-35

• Thacker, Jonathan. 2007. ‘Calderón and the Comedia’s Second Generation’. In A Companion to Golden Age Theatre, pp. 92-122. Woodbridge, Tamesis

Entry written by Kathleen Jeffs. Last updated on 13 October 2010.

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