Juan Ruiz de Alarcón
| Juan Ruiz de Alarcón | |
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Juan Ruiz de Alarcón y Mendoza c. 1580 Taxco, Mexico |
| Died | August 4, 1639 (aged 58–59) Madrid, Spain |
| Occupation | writer, actor, and lawyer |
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Juan Ruiz de Alarcón (1581? - August 4, 1639) was a Novohispanic writer of the Golden Age who cultivated different variants of dramaturgy. His works include the comedy La verdad sospechosa (), which is considered a masterpiece of Latin American Baroque theater.
Juan Ruiz de Alarcón was born in Real de Taxco, later named Taxco de Alarcón in his honour. His family was of old Asturian nobility. The name Alarcón had been given to his ancestor Ferren Martínez de Ceballos by Alfonso VIII of Castile after he had successfully driven the Moors from the fortress of Alarcón near Cuenca in 1177. Juán Ruiz de Alarcón's maternal grandparents Hernando and María de Mendoza were among the first Spaniards to arrive in Mexico in 1535, when they established themselves in Taxco. Their daughter Leonor de Mendoza married Pedro Ruiz de Alarcón who was described as an hidalgo.
Juan Ruiz de Alarcón had four brothers: Pedro Ruiz de Alarcón, who was rector at the College of Saint John Lateran, Hernando Ruiz de Alarcón who was a priest and is known for having written a treatise documenting the non-Christian religious practices of the Nahua Indians of central Mexico, Gaspar and García, about whom little is known.
Juan Ruiz de Alarcón was born about 1581 at Real de Taxco, New Spain, where his father was superintendent of mines; his mother was descended from one of Spain’s most illustrious families, the Mendozas. He was small of stature and suffered from hunchbackedness. Besides, his red haired complexion made him an occasional object of scorn, since some sectors of the conservative catholic society in which he later lived held the prejudice that Judas Iscariot was a redhead himself. Because of this, his critics often ridiculed his appearance rather than his works.
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