Manuel Tamayo y Baus

Tamayo y Baus, Manuel (1829–98), Spanish dramatist, who represents the transition from Romanticism to Realism in the Spanish theatre. His early plays were first performed by his parents, who were both on the stage, and were mainly translations from the French and German. Of his own plays, La locura de amor (The Insanity of Love, 1855) and La bola de nieve (The Snowball, 1856), dealing with jealousy in historical and modern settings respectively, were the first to succeed. The only one to be remembered now is Un drama nuevo (A New Play, 1867), written under the pseudonym Joaquín Estebánez. It is set in Elizabethan times, with Shakespeare as one of the characters. An actor who is playing Yorick (the ‘king's jester’ referred to in Hamlet) kills on stage during a mock fight the young actor with whom he suspects his wife is in love, egged on by the Iago-like character called Walton.

Manuel Tamayo y Baus , 1829-98, Spanish dramatist. Born into a family of actors, Tamayo became one of the most popular and versatile Spanish playwrights of the 19th cent. Among his many successful plays are the historical Locura de amor [the madness of love] (1855) and his tragic masterpiece, Un drama nuevo (1867; tr. A New Drama, 1915). In his contemporary thesis dramas he wrote of social problems.

Bibliography: See biography by G. C. Flynn (1973).