The Madness of Love (1855), in which Juana la Loca, the passionate, love-sick daughter of Isabel the Catholic, figures as the chief personage, established Tamayo's reputation as Spain's leading playwright.

Del dicho al Jiecho (1864) is from La Pierre de touche of Jules Sandeau and Émile Augier, and a pleasing proverb, Más vale Maña que Fuerza (1866) is a great improvement upon Mme Caroline Bertons Diplomatie du Ménage.

[1] The revolution of 1868, which cost Tamayo his post at the San Isidro Library, is indirectly responsible for No hay mal que por bien no venga (1868), a clever arrangement of Le Feu au Couvent, by Henri Murger's friend, Théodore Barrière.

This renascence of an old-world motive has induced many critics to consider Lances de Honor as Tamayos best work, but that distinction should be accorded rather to Un Drama nuevo (1867), a play in which the author has ventured to place Shakespeare and Yorick upon the scene.

In 1858 Tamayo was elected a member of the Spanish Academy, to which he afterwards became permanent secretary;[2] and in 1884 the Conservative minister, Alejandro Pidal y Mon, appointed him director of the National Library.