studying and writing, more determined than ever to
become a successful dramatist and thus realize the ambition that was
kindled in him by the first dramatic performance that he had witnessed
when he had already reached manhood.

At the time of his marriage in 1830 he was still helping his ailing and
despondent father in the workshop; more interested undoubtedly in his
literary pursuits, but ever faithful to the call of duty. Until success
as a dramatist made it possible for him to gain a living for his family
by literature, he continued patiently his manual labor. At his father's
death he closed the workshop and for a short time became dependent for
a livelihood on stenography, with which he had already eked out the
slender returns from the labor of his hands.

Meanwhile, during these last years of apprenticeship in which
Hartzenbusch was gaining complete mastery of his art by continual study
and practice, the literary revolution known as Romanticism was making
rapid progress. The death of the despotic Ferdinand VII in 1833 removed
the restraint that had been imposed upon literature as well as upon
political ideas. The theories of the French and English Romanticists
were penetrating Spanish literary circles, to be taken up eagerly by the
younger dramatists; political exiles of high social and literary
prestige, such as Martinez de la Rosa and the Duque de Rivas, were
returning to Spain with plays and poems composed according to the new
theories; the natural reaction from the logical, unemotional ideals of
the Classicists was developing conditions favorable to the revolution.
The first year of the struggle between the two schools of literature,
1834, gave the Romanticists two important victories in the _Conjuracion
de Venecia_ of Martinez de la Rosa, and the _Macias_ of Jose de Larra,
two plays that show clearly Romantic tendencies but that avoid an abrupt
break with the Classical theories. They served to prepare the way for
the thoroughly Romantic play of the Duque de Rivas, _Don Alvaro o la
fuerza del sino_, a magnificent, though disordered, drama that gained
for the Romanticists a decisive victory in 1835, a victory over
Classicism in Spain similar to that gained in Paris five years earlier
by the famous _Hernani_ of Victor Hugo, leader of the French
Romanticists. In 1836 the equally successful performance of _El
Trovador_, the Romantic play of Garcia Gutierrez, confirmed the victory
gained by the Romanticists with _