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Juan Ruiz de Alarcón y Mendoza (1581? - August 4, 1639), was a Mexican dramatist.
He was born about 1581 at Real de Taxco, Guerrero, where his father was superintendent of mines. He went to Spain in 1600, studied law at the University of Salamanca, and in 1608 went back to Mexico to compete for a professorial chair. Returning to Spain in 1611, he entered the household of the marquis de Salinas, became a successful dramatist, and was nominated a member of the council of the Indies in 1623. He died at Madrid.
His plays were published in 1628 and 1634; he wrote at least twenty dramas, the most famous of which is La Verdad sospechosa, which was adapted by Pierre Corneille as Le Menteur (The Liar). Alarcón was a hunchback. Embittered by his deformity, he was constantly engaged in personal quarrels with his rivals; but his attitude in these polemics is always dignified, and his crushing retort to Félix Lope de Vega in Los pechos privilegiados is an unsurpassable example of cold, scornful invective.
More than any other Spanish dramatist, Alarcón was preoccupied with ethical aims, and his gift of dramatic presentation is as brilliant as his dialogue is natural and vivacious. It has been alleged that his non-Spanish origin is noticeable in his plays, and there is some foundation for the criticism; but his workmanship is exceptionally conscientious, and in El Tejedor de Segovia he had produced a masterpiece of national art, national sentiment and national expression.es:Juan Ruiz de Alarcón