Andrés de Claramonte y Corroy (Murcia c. 1580 – September 19, 1626) was a playwright of the
Spanish Golden AgeThe Spanish Golden Age is a period of flourishing in arts and literature in Spain, coinciding with the political rise and decline of the Spanish Habsburg dynasty. El Siglo de Oro does not imply precise dates and is usually considered to have lasted longer than an actual century...
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Very little facts are known about his life. As an actor, he worked for the most important companies, such as Baltasar de Pinedo's or Alonso de Olmedo's. As a playwright, he wrote dramas with great epic style, in which he showed his talent for visual and theatrical effects.
Dramatic production
The brave black man in Flanders (El valiente negro en Flandes, in Spanish)
"The brave black man in Flanders" shows the racism problem in society. It tells the story of a black man, a slave in Merida that obtains his freedom, then goes to Flanders, and there he has to fight discrimination due to his skin colour, and obtains the grade of general by his merits, he also reveals to have the confidence of the Duke of Alba. He receives the habit of the Order of Santiago and marries his once master's daughter.
Other dramatic plays
Other less known plays are
El Gran rey de los desiertos, San Onofre (The great king of the deserts, Saint Onuphrius), which is evidently related to
El Condenado por desconfiado, as it has been shown by Ciriaco Moron and Alfredo Rodriguez Lopez-Vazquez. Recently, Alejandro Garcia Reidy has discovered an unpublished play by Claramonte,
Las dos columnas de San Carlos, in which is shown Charles Borromeo's life, a play that has the particularity to have in the first scene the character of Marin Luther.
Critic's considerations about Claramonte
The Spanish Scholar Marcelino Menendez y Pelayo looked down on this author, but nowadays he has been reconsidered by the critics, particularly Alfredo Rodriguez Lopez-Vazquez, Charles V. Ganelin and Fernando Cantalapiedra Erostarbe. Some of these support the idea that this author wrote some of the most important plays of the Spanish Golden Centuries, such as The Star of Seville, The abuser of Seville, traditionally attributed to Lope de Vega and Tirso de Molina