SOURCE: “The ‘Romanticism’ of La conjuración de Venecia,” in Kentucky Romance Quarterly, Vol. 20, No. 2, 1973, pp. 235-42.

In the following essay, McGaha suggests that the romantic qualities of Martínez de la Rosa's drama La conjuración de Venecia are relatively slight and that the playwright was essentially a neoclassicist.

Francisco Martínez de la Rosa (1787-1862) is traditionally credited with having introduced Romanticism into Spain. The work which gained him this title was his play, La conjuración de Venecia, written during his exile in France and first published by Didot in 1830. The play was first performed in Madrid on April 23, 1834, and was immediately and overwhelmingly successful. Perhaps the first critic to realize the transcendent significance of the work was Eugenio de Ochoa, who in 1835 wrote of Martínez de la Rosa that “Este poeta tiene … la gloria de haber introducido el primero en el moderno teatro...