LOPEZ DE AYALA, WOO db. ADELARDO (182S-79). A Spanish dramatist and poet. horn in the District of Seville. May I, 1828. De studied law at the University of Seville and then went to Madrid. There, before he was twenty-one years of age, lie produced his first drama, El hombre de estado, which won praise from the critics, and was performed in 1851. In 1857 he was elected a Deputy to the Cortes from Badajoz. Acquiescing in the revolution of 1868, he accommodated himself also to later changes in the Administration. and was a member of the first Cabinet under Alfonso XII. Ile died rather suddenly at Madrid, ,lanuary 30, 1879, be ing then president of the Congress. In literature Ayala is a figure of the period following that of the nineteenth century Romanticism in Spain. and his work is marked by good taste and temperance of expression. His lyrics are few in number, but are of rather high poetic merit, especially his sonnets. One of these, the Dame, Schor, la firme valuated, was set to music by his friend Arricta and is sung every year at the services in com memo•ation of his death. The best of the lyrics is the Epistola in octaves, addressed to Arricta. As a dramatist, Ayala represents a psychological tendency in Spanish letters. This tendency is
clear in .Ayala's very first play, the Ilombrc de estado, dealing with the tragic story of a per sonage of the seventeenth century, the statesman and lover Don Rodrigo CaIderOn. Several minor dramas 'followed, and for a while the poet gave himself up to the writing of sarzuclas or vaude ville plays. In 1854 appeared the laaja, a piece superior in many ways to the Hombre de estedo. The moral purpose is manifest in the Teptdo do ridrio. a drama of much merit. A still greater development in art is seen in the Taut() po• eiento (So Much Per Cent.), a piece merciless in its sociological analysis. Not long after the ap pearance of this play he was presented with a gold crown paid for by public subscription. Ayala's dramatic fame reached its height with the Coast/c/o (1878). As in the Tanta po• cicada, he here attacks the element of positivism in our modern life. Consult the edition of his fibres (plays and dramas) in the Coleecion de escri tares castellanos, 7 vols., lyrics.; in vol. vii.; Blanco-Garefa, La literature espahola en el siglo IX., porte sounds (Madrid, 1891).