Pedro Muñoz Seca
| Pedro Muñoz Seca | |
|---|---|
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| Born | Pedro Muñoz Seca 21 February 1879 Puerto de Santa María, Andalusia, Spain |
| Died | 28 November 1936 (aged 57) Paracuellos de Jarama, Spain |
| Occupation | Writer, dramatist |
| Language | Spanish |
| Nationality | Spanish |
| Genre | Astracanada |
| Spouse | María Asunción Ariza Díez de Bunes |
Pedro Muñoz Seca (born February 20, 1879 in El Puerto de Santa María, Spain; died November 28, 1936 in Paracuellos de Jarama, Madrid, Spain ) was a Spanish comic playwright. He was one of the most successful playwrights of his era. He wrote approximately 300 dramatic works, both sainetes (short vignettes) and longer plays, often in collaboration with Pedro Pérez Fernández or Enrique García Álvarez. His most ambitious and best known play is La venganza de Don Mendo (Don Mendo's Revenge, 1918); other major works include La barba de Carrillo (Carrillo's Beard, 1918) and Pepe Conde (1920).
Muñoz Seca was born into a large family in El Puerto de Santa María, Cadiz, Spain, on February 20, 1879. (Because Muñoz Seca loved palindromic numbers, however, he often claimed that he was born in 1881. He also claimed to have been born at 10:15 pm, "the normal time for shows to start".) Muñoz Seca attended primary school in the Jesuit school of San Luis Gonzaga in El Puerto de Santa María. He then moved to Seville to study philosophy and law; he graduated in 1901. While Muñoz Seca was still a student, his first plays premiered in El Puerto de Santa María (República estudiantil, Un Perfecto de pasivas, and El señor de Pilili) and in Seville (Las Guerreras).
After his graduation, Muñoz Seca moved to Madrid. There, he taught Latin, Greek, and Hebrew and later would work as a lawyer. He often attended literary society meetings, and there met Sebastian Alonso. The two collaborated on the play El Contrabando, which premiered in 1904. Muñoz Seca entered public service in 1908, taking a post in the Ministry of Public Works and Transport. Soon thereafter, he married María Asunción Ariza Díez de Bulnes; they would have nine children.
His work often employed "slang, puns, plays on words, caricature, parody, and dramatic tricks". He was the inventor of a new genre of comic theatre, the astracanada, the most celebrated example of which is La venganza de Don Mendo, a satire of the romances popular in Spain at the turn of the century.
Muñoz Seca's popularity grew after the premiere of La venganza de Don Mendo. Many of his later plays were very successful, including La pluma verde (1922), Los chatos (1924), La tela (1925), and Los extremeños se tocan (1927) (all written in collaboration with Pedro Pérez Fernández, but who contributed little to the works). These works shifted away from costumbrismo toward Muñoz Seca's trademark astracanada.
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