CANIZARES, JOSÉ de. - Spanish playwright,
b. in Madrid on 4 July 1676 and d. there on 14 Sept. 1750,
in whose prolific output (comedies, *entremeses, loas,
zarzuelas, bailes*, etc.), in which reworkings
of the best dramatic creations of the preceding century are frequent, the skill in weaving plots and delineating
types and figures, the ingenuity of the dialogue, the vein of Gongorine lyricism, give prominence to a picturesque sense of
Madrilenian life that is translated into typical expressions,
mischievous and burlesque, and to which Goya would give, decades
later, the most vivid interpretation; not infrequently,
however, the comedy becomes crude and harsh.
A perspicacious sense of history and a sure intuition of the major figures of the national theater allow
him the felicitous pairing of the figures of the two great
mystics, St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Jesus, in
A cual mejor, confesada y confesor, as well as the revival
of the drama of Don Carlos (El príncipe don Carlos) and of the
vicissitudes of Henry III (El rey Enrique III, llamado el en-fermo). Noteworthy in the framework of his dramatic production
are El dómine Lucas and *El picarillo de España, señor de
la Gran Canaria*, an original fusion of truth and mockery around
a character at once picaresque and chivalric, with
the boundaries between reality and fiction blurring in an atmosphere of eighteenth-century grace. He is also the author of reworkings of works
by Racine and Metastasio.