The Trickster of Seville and the Stone Guest

by Tirso de Molina

THE LITERARY WORK

A tragic play set in Naples, Tarragona, Seville, and Dos Hermanas during the fourteenth century; published in Spanish (as El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra) c. 1630, In English in 1923.

SYNOPSIS

A young Spaniard deceives, seduces, and abandons several young women but is ultimately punished by supernatural forces for his misdeeds.

Events in History at the Time the Play Takes Place

The Play in Focus

Events in History at the Time the Play Was Written

For More Information

Gabriel Téllez, better known by his pseudonym Tirso de Molina, was born in Madrid around 1583. His parentage is unknown, although some scholars have claimed that Tirso was actually the bastard son of the Duke of Osuna. Information on Tirso’s early years is likewise sketchy. After studying at the University of Alcalá, he entered the monastic order of Our Lady of Mercy (Mercederian order) at Guadalajara in 1601. In 1610, while living in Madrid, the young monk first began to write for the theater, adopting his pseudonym in 1616. Between 1616 and 1618, Tirso taught theology and tended to Mercederian affairs in Santo Domingo in the West Indies. Around 1620, Tirso moved back to Madrid and began the major phase of his literary activity, writing an estimated 300 to 400 plays, 80 of which are extant today, although questions of authorship have not been settled with regard to all. In 1625, Tirso was censured by the Castilian Junta de reformación (Committee for Reform) for what was considered his unseemly choice of language and subject matter in his plays. Forced to leave Madrid, he essentially gave up writing to concentrate on his religious career. His literary works, however, were collected and published in installments from 1627 to 1639. EI burlador of Sevillay con-vidado de piedra (The Trickster of Seville and the Stone Guest) is among Tirso’s best-known plays, notable for its deft handling of strong religious themes and for its introduction of the character of Don Juan into world literature.

Events in History at the Time the Play Takes Place

Don Juan—history and legend

Although the story of a rakish trickster who tries to outwit death itself already existed in various songs and ballads, Tirso de Molina was apparently the first to give the character a name and identity as Don Juan Tenorio. Since then, many scholars have speculated as to whether Tirso’s Don Juan truly existed, under this name or that of another of the playwright’s contemporaries. Certainly, libertines were not unknown in either the fourteenth century—during which The Trickster of Seville takes place—or the seventeenth century, when Tirso composed his play. While admired by contemporary readers for their virility and audacity, libertines were not necessarily held up as heroic figures to emulate. Indeed, during the thirteenth century, the ideal hero bore a closer resemblance to the legendary Cid, who was portrayed in various poems and romances as not only a perfect warrior but as a faithful, devoted husband and father.

Several theories have been advanced as to Don Juan’s historical identity. One possible model might have been Mateo Vázquez de Leca, who was a native of Seville, the nephew of King Philip II’s secretary, and, apparently, a scandalous rake in his youth. Arguably the most credible candidate is Don Pedro Téllez Girón (1579–1624), Marquis of Peñafiel and, later, the Duke of Osuna. As an adolescent, Don Pedro resisted his father’s attempts to control him; he married young, but then philandered frequently, indulging in sexual trickery. He also lied and broke his word repeatedly, obtained money under false pretenses, and killed a man in a brawl. Don Pedro made Seville—close to his own residence in Osuna—his particular territory, conducting many of his misdeeds in the crime-ridden city. The extent to which Tirso was familiar with Don Pedro’s exploits remains unclear. It has been suggested by at least one source, however, that Tirso may have been Don Pedro’s illegitimate half-brother and that The Trickster of Seville might have been intended as a judgment on an unacknowledged kinsman’s scandalous behavior.

Although later versions of the Don Juan legend focus on the character as a famous lover, Tirso’s play concentrates on Don Juan the trickster instead. Far from being a great lover, Tirso’s Don Juan cares more about duping women and outwitting his rivals than about engaging in sensual pleasures. He prides himself on his own cleverness and his ability to deceive his intended victims by one elaborate ploy after another, declaring, “Not for nothing am I / Labelled the greatest trickster of Seville. / My very favorite pastime, my delight’s / To trick a woman, steal away her honour, / Deprive her of her cherished reputation” (Molina, Trickster of Seville, 2.269–73).

The reign of Alfonso XI

In The Trickster of Seville, Tirso de Molina employs the device of putting royalty onstage, which was popularized by Spanish playwright Lope de Vega. The king in question is Alfonso XI of Castile and León, who reigned from 1312–50. After the death of his father, Ferdinand IV, Alfonso XI acceded to the throne as a one-year-old infant. The young king’s grandmother, María de Molina, who had retired from court life, emerged from retirement to protect and defend his rights from untrustworthy kinsmen and rival claimants to the throne. After her death in 1321, however, rivalries between factions of nobles nearly tore the realm apart.

Achieving his majority in 1325, Alfonso XI worked diligently to restore order to his troubled kingdom. He gave new powers to the municipalities and to the Cortes (parliament) in exchange for their support against the nobles. He also chose officials who had no competing aristocratic affiliations, thus strengthening the power of the Crown. During his reign, Alfonso XI earned the nickname of Alfonso el Justiciero (“Alfonso the Just”). His foreign policy was mostly successful too. Despite losing Gibraltar in 1333 to the Moors of Granada and their Moroccan allies, the Marinids, Alfonso XI mounted several effective campaigns against the Moors in the 1340s. Forming a Christian coalition with the kingdoms of Portugal, Navarre, and Aragon, Alfonso XI helped defeat Moorish invaders from North Africa at the Battle of Río Salado in 1340. In 1344, Castilian and Portuguese forces recaptured the seaport of Algeciras, which had been in Moorish hands since 1340.

Tirso de Molina’s play mentions neither King Alfonso’s triumphs in battle nor the efficacy of his domestic policies. Indeed, the play departs significantly from dramatic tradition, which at the time presented historical stage monarchs as idealized figures. The Trickster of Seville, in contrast, presents Alfonso XI as well-intentioned but somewhat ineffectual, always a step behind Don Juan. Although the king sincerely attempts to appease the rake’s outraged victims by arranging socially advantageous marriages for them, Alfonso is continually forced to abandon or revise his plans in response to further havoc wreaked by the young rake. The play’s harmonious ending owes less to King Alfonso’s efficiency than to the fortunate happenstance of Don Juan’s sudden death and descent into hell. It may be worth noting the irony of King Alfonso’s role in Tirso’s play as a proponent of honorable marriage and domestic virtues: the historical Alfonso XI enjoyed a longstanding adulterous affair with Leonor de Guzmán, a beautiful widow of Seville, by whom he had several illegitimate children.

The Play in Focus

Plot summary

At the court of Naples, Don Juan Tenorio, a rakish young Spaniard, seduces Duchess Isabela by pretending to be her betrothed, the Duke Octavio. On discovering the ruse, the horrified Isabela raises an alarm and the King of Naples has Don Juan arrested. Don Pedro Tenorio, the Spanish ambassador at court and Don Juan’s uncle, rebukes his nephew for his misdeeds, reminding Don Juan that he was sent to Italy in the first place because of his lewd behavior in Spain. For the sake of the Tenorio good name, however, Don Pedro lets his nephew escape, advising him to take refuge in Sicily or Milan. Don Pedro then deflects scandal from his family. First he implicates Duke Octavio in Is-abela’s seduction to the king; then he convinces Octavio that Isabela was unfaithful to him. The grief-stricken duke vows to sail for Spain and leave his former beloved to her disgrace.

Shipwrecked off the coast of Tarragona, Don Juan and his servant Catalinón are aided by Tis-bea, a beautiful but disdainful fisher-girl. Having long prided herself on her indifference to her many suitors, Tisbea finds herself falling in love with Don Juan, who seduces her with promises of marriage, then abandons her, setting fire to her cottage and escaping on a horse that she gave him. Meanwhile, back in Seville, King Alfonso XI greets Don Gonzalo de Ulloa, Grand Commander of the Order of Calatrava, who has returned from a royal embassy to Portugal to settle an exchange of territories between the two nations. The king listens to Don Gonzalo’s extravagant praise of the city of Lisbon, then raises the subject of arranging a marriage between Don Gonzalo’s daughter, Doña Ana, with a gentleman of Seville: Don Juan Tenorio. Don Gonzalo is amenable to the suggestion and agrees to inform his daughter.

The king’s plans for the marriage fall through, however, when he learns from Don Diego Tenorio, Don Juan’s father, of the young man’s amorous misadventure in Naples. Furious, King Alfonso exiles Don Juan from Seville to Lebrija,

THE AUTHORSHIP QUESTION

Like many prolific playwrights of the Spanish Golden Age, Tirso initially gave preservation and publication of his plays little thought. Later in his life, after he had stopped writing for the theater, Tirso undertook the task of collecting his scattered manuscripts for publication. Five volumes, or partes, of Tirso’s works were printed between 1627 and 1639. The Trickster of Seville, however, was not included in any of those volumes, which has led to the question of whether Tirso was indeed the author. But another collection of plays by several authors—printed c. 1630—included a copy of The Trickster of Seville with a title page that assigned authorship to Tirso. An alternate version of the play, Tan largo me lo Fiás (What Long Credit You Give Me) was first published under the name of the Spanish dramatist Calderón de la Barca. Most scholars now agree that Tan largo was in fact an earlier version of the play written by Tirso himself. The Trickster of Seville is the version better known to modern readers and audiences.

arranges to bring the disgraced Isabela to Spain as Don Juan’s prospective bride, and makes Don Gonzalo major-domo of the palace to compensate for the dissolution of Doña Ana’s betrothal to Don Juan. When Duke Octavio arrives in Seville, King Alfonso welcomes the jilted duke and suggests him as a possible husband for Dona Ana; the duke agrees and rejoices in his good fortune. Back in Seville, unaware of his impending banishment, Don Juan ingratiates himself to Duke Octavio, who never suspects that the young Spaniard was the man who cuckolded him with Isabela. Don Juan also renews his acquaintance with the Marquis of Mota. The two young men trade sallies about the prostitutes of Seville; then Mota imprudently reveals to Don Juan that he is actually in love with Doña Ana, who is his cousin and newly arrived in Seville. Moreover, Doña Ana returns Mota’s love and the two of them have been engaging in a clandestine courtship, writing each other love letters and planning assignations. By chance, Don Juan intercepts one of Dona Ana’s notes in which she invites Mota to a tryst with her at eleven o’clock that night. Don Juan immediately schemes to trick and seduce Doña Ana himself, dismissing his servant Catal-inon’s warnings that he will ultimately pay the penalty for his trickery.

On encountering Mota again, Don Juan tells him about Dona Ana’s note but deliberately gives him the wrong hour for the assignation. That night, Don Juan borrows Mota’s cloak and visits Dona Ana at the appointed hour, but the girl instantly discovers the deception and screams for help. Don Gonzalo comes to his daughter’s aid and is fatally stabbed by a fleeing Don Juan. An hour later, the bewildered Mota appears on the scene and is arrested for Don Juan’s crimes. Dona Ana takes sanctuary in the queen’s royal chapel, while King Alfonso decrees that Don Gonzalo be buried with the pomp and ceremony befitting his personal merit and noble rank.

En route to Lebrija, Don Juan and Catalinón arrive at the village of Dos Hermanas, where a wedding between two young people is in progress. Invited to attend the festivities, Don Juan sets his sights on the pretty bride, Aminta, deciding to make her his latest conquest. Before the marriage can be consummated, Don Juan plays upon the insecurities of Batricio, the bridegroom, who is persuaded to abandon Aminta. Don Juan then presents himself to Aminta as her new “husband,” promising her wealth, status, and eternal devotion. Initially suspicious of him, Aminta eventually capitulates. Meanwhile, Isabela, lamenting her impending marriage to Don Juan, passes through Tarragona on her way to Seville and meets a similarly embittered Tisbea. The fisher-girl relates her tale of woe to Isabela, who is appalled by this further evidence of Don Juan’s perfidy and invites Tisbea to accompany her.

While journeying back to Seville himself, Don Juan learns from his servant Catalinón that the wronged suitors Octavio and Mota now know of his treachery and that King Alfonso wishes him to marry Isabela. On their way to lodgings, master and servant come across the church in which Don Gonzalo’s tomb is located. Entering the church, Don Juan taunts Don Gonzalo’s statue, pulling its stone beard and facetiously inviting it to dine with him that evening. To the horror of Don Juan and his servants, the statue turns up at the appointed hour and issues a return invitation to Don Juan for the following night. Not wishing to be thought a coward, Don Juan agrees to sup with the stone guest the next night at ten. They clasp hands in parting; then the statue withdraws and disappears. Alone, Don Juan remembers the stone guest’s icy handshake and experiences a sudden fear of death and damnation. He quickly silences those fears, however, and resolves to keep the appointment.

On learning of Isabela’s arrival in Seville, King Alfonso and Don Diego discuss what is to be done about Don Juan. They agree that Don Juan will be made to wed Isabela and receive the title of Count of Lebrija. The king also intends for Dona Ana to marry the marquis of Mota, for whom the girl has obtained Alfonso’s forgiveness for his alleged involvement in Don Gonzalo’s death. The meeting between Don Diego and the king is now interrupted by Octavio, who asks the king for permission to challenge Don Juan and make him pay for his treachery in Naples. King Alfonso prevents a brewing quarrel between Don Diego and Octavio, and forbids the duke to harm Don Juan. Octavio grudgingly complies; alone, the duke encounters Aminta and her father Gaseno and learns from them of Don Juan’s latest deceit in Dos Hermanas. Seeing an opportunity for revenge on Don Juan, Octavio promises to array Aminta in fine clothes and bring her to court to meet her errant bridegroom.

Meanwhile, Don Juan and Catalinón keep their appointed tryst at Don Gonzalo’s tomb. Waited upon by the dead, master and servant sit down to a feast of snakes, scorpions, vinegar, and gall. A fearful Catalinón is further unnerved by the dead’s songs of judgment and damnation; Don Juan, too, is frightened but attempts to conceal it. When the feast ends, Don Gonzalo’s statue enjoins Don Juan to take his hand; obeying, Don Juan finds the statue’s grasp burning hot and struggles in vain to free himself. Don Gonzalo informs the young man that he is now eternally damned for his crimes and, ignoring Don Juan’s pleas for a last-minute confession, drags him down to hell. Catalinón hauls himself to safety as the tomb sinks into the earth after the statue and Don Juan.

In Seville, the various men and women whom Don Juan has betrayed converge before the king and demand Don Juan’s punishment. Confronted with all the evidence of the young man’s wickedness, the king finally pronounces a death sentence upon Don Juan that even Don Diego does not contest. Just then, Catalinón enters with the news of Don Juan’s fate at the hand of the stone guest. The king declares that Don Juan has received his just punishment by God and arranges a series of marriages to compensate for Don Juan’s villainy. Mota and Ana are reunited, as are Batricio and Aminta, while Octavio asks for and is granted the hand of the now-available Isabela. King Alfonso then issues a final command that Don Gonzalo’s tomb be moved to Madrid as the play concludes.

Women—conquests or conquerors?

While it is tempting to brand Tirso’s Don Juan as misogynistic, it is probably more accurate to describe him as oblivious to women as anything other than the instruments of his own pleasure. Significantly, that pleasure seems to lie less in the indulgence of his sexual appetites than in the demonstration of his own cleverness and ingenuity. It is the reputation of being “the greatest trickster”—not the “greatest lover”—of Seville that Don Juan values most.

Don Juan is not immune to women’s beauty; indeed, their physical charms provide the impetus for his sexual pursuit of them. Attracted to the fisher-girl, Tisbea, who has saved him from drowning, Don Juan declares to his servant, “Oh, I can hardly wait to have Tisbea! / What a fine body of a girl!” (Trickster of Seville, 2.896–97). Similarly, Don Juan later sings the praises of Aminta, the country bride he plans to seduce away from her new husband: “What lovely eyes she has! Her hands like snow! / Already her beauty burns within my soul!” (Trickster of Seville, 2.743–44). Nonetheless, it is the game of deceit and seduction that Don Juan truly finds irresistible. He barely catches a glimpse of Dona Ana through the bars of her window when her love letter to Mota falls into his hands, yet his determination to have her is as strong as with his other conquests: “This trick delights me even as I think / Of how I’ll see it through! I’ll have this girl / With all the ingenuity with which / The Duchess Isabela succumbed in Naples!” (Trickster of Seville, 2.301–04). To Don Juan, women are essentially interchangeable; it never occurs to him to consider that the sexual trickery that succeeded with Duchess Isabela might fail with Dona Ana, as indeed proves to be the case.

In contrast with his protagonist’s blithely arrogant categorization of all women as potential conquests, Tirso takes pains to depict each of Don Juan’s female victims as an individual in her own right. Granted, none of them are presented as blameless for the situations in which they find themselves. Both Isabela and Dona Ana are involved in secret romances with the men they love—Duke Octavio and the Marquis of Mota, respectively—which provides Don Juan with the opportunity to attempt their seduction. Meanwhile, the credulous Aminta, at first determined to remain faithful to her absent husband, finds herself swayed by Don Juan’s

THE KNIGHTLY ORDERS

During the Middle Ages, the monastic knightly orders of Calatrava (1158), Alcántara (1166), and Santiago (1170) were created to defend Spain’s Christian states against the Muslims. Intended to embody the religious and secular ideals of chivalry, these orders were headed by a Grand Master and his high-ranking subordinates. The comendador mayor, a position held by the play’s Don Gonzalo, was second only to the Grand Master. As religious knights, members of the orders enjoyed clerical and aristocratic privileges. They were entrusted with administering the lands (known as encomiendas) they had reconquered from the Moors, and were allowed to retain income from those lands. Over the years, the three orders acquired great wealth and power, attracting many nobles as members. Towards the end of the fifteenth century, the orders lost much of their power—Queen Isabella came to regard them as a possible threat to royal authority. Nevertheless, to hold high rank within the orders continued to be very prestigious, even in Tirso’s lifetime.

protestations of love and even more by his extravagant promises of wealth. Tisbea, on the other hand, falls, like her seducer, through pride and overconfidence. As Don Juan prides himself on his reputation as the trickster of Seville, so Tisbea initially rejoices in being immune to the attentions of her many love-struck suitors: “I alone am free from love’s harsh tyranny, / And only I can boast I’m really happy! / For I can speak with pride of liberty, / And of my rejection of passion’s bonds” (Trickster of Seville, 1.379–82). Don Juan’s betrayal leaves the suddenly love-struck fisher-girl, literally, in ashes—with her cottage on fire and Tisbea herself burning with humiliation: “My soul’s on fire too. It burns. Have pity! / I am the one who always mocked all men / And took delight in all their suffering. / The truth is those who think they fool all others / Are in the end the ones who fool themselves” (Trickster of Seville, 1.1012–16).

Intriguingly, despite their victimization by Don Juan, the women in Tirso’s play attempt to fight back or at least seek redress for their wrongs. Forced into a betrothal with Don Juan,

VARIATIONS ON THE “STONE GUEST” SUBPLOT

Literary scholar Gwynne Edwards provides his own translation of an old ballad that Spanish intellectual Ramón Menéndez Pidal first heard in 1905 in the province of Segovia:

“This text has been suppressed due to author restrictions.”

(Edwards in Molina, pp. xxii-xxiii)

Isabela encounters Tisbea by chance and the two women travel to Seville together in hopes of exposing his villainy to the king. Sequestered in a convent after Don Juan kills her father, Dona Ana successfully intercedes for Mota, who has been imprisoned for his former friend’s crimes, and wins his freedom and his hand in marriage. Even Aminta, finding herself deserted by Don Juan, takes the initiative to follow him to Seville and demand her rights as his legal wife. Although supernatural forces decide Don Juan’s ultimate fate and King Alfonso assumes responsibility for all the marriages at the end of the play, the women’s attempts to determine their own futures still represents a brave step towards autonomy and independence.

The plight shared by the women of Tirso’s play and their efforts to counteract their disgrace have their basis in history. In medieval and early modern Spain, it was necessary that a woman’s sexual dishonor be avenged, because her shame reflected upon not only her reputation but also that of her husband, her male relatives, and even her entire community. It mattered little whether or not the woman had been a willing participant in her own disgrace:

Whether women engaged in transgressive behaviour or were victims of male predatory practices—rape, seduction, kidnapping, or mere slander—they were expected to pay the price demanded by strict codes of honour. Banishment or revenge, often the killing of the seducer and the seduced, followed swiftly upon dishonour. The family’s honour could not be restored until these actions had been carried out.

(Ruiz, p. 239)

Sources and literary context

As previously discussed, Tirso may well have found the inspiration for his Don Juan among his contemporaries or perhaps in accounts of past libertines of Seville. The “stone guest” subplot of Tirso’s play, however, seems to have been derived from medieval ballads and folktales that circulated throughout Europe, and possibly from an Italian religious drama, Leonzio, overra la terrible ben-mdetta di un morto (c. 1615). Other elements of the play, such as the details regarding the port cities of Lisbon and Seville, may have originated from Tirso’s own travel experiences.

Overall, Tirso’s dramatic works seem to fall into three categories: 1) historical plays, 2) cloak-and-dagger comedies (comedias de capa y espada) involving love intrigues among the nobility, and 3) religious dramas. Although The Trickster of Seville contains some elements common to cloak-and-dagger comedies (love, intrigue, mistaken identity), it is usually considered a religious drama, as Don Juan is ultimately called to account not just for his rakish behavior but for his willful defiance of God in pursuit of his desires. Tirso’s plays frequently evoke comparisons with those of Lope de Vega (1562–1635), his dramatic precursor and the play wright most responsible for the form and shape of Spanish comedia during the seventeenth century. While Lope’s plays are often considered more inventive than and technically superior to those of his younger compatriot, Tirso’s plays nonetheless garner praise for their psychological insight into characters—especially female characters—and their thoughtful exploration of such profound religious themes as sin, penance, redemption, and free will.

Events in History at the Time the Play Was Written

The Counter-Reformation in Spain

During the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, many Christian nations in Europe, including Spain, became involved in the religious movement known as the Counter-Reformation. Also known as the Catholic Reformation, the Counter-Reformation denoted the response of the Roman Catholic Church to the Protestant Reformation, which had gained momentum since 1517, when the German theologian Martin Luther had first nailed to the church door his Ninety-Five Theses calling for sweeping reforms. Overall, the Counter-Reformation may be said to have had two major objectives: internal religious reform within the Church itself and the restoration of Catholicism in Protestant northern Europe.

Pope Paul III (reigned 1534–1549), considered to be the first pope of the Counter-Reformation, convened the Council of Trent in 1545 to settle the most pressing issues resulting from the ongoing religious controversy in Europe. Although the Council encountered many difficulties and met only intermittently during sessions held from 1545 to 1563, it nonetheless proved to be an effective force for stabilizing and revitalizing Roman Catholicism. For example, the council clarified the Catholic doctrine on the nature of the sacraments, a point that had been challenged by Protestants. The council also implemented disciplinary measures targeting luxurious living among the clergy, the nepotistic appointment of relatives to Church office, and the absence of bishops from their dioceses. Special attention was given to the education of future priests: diocesan seminaries were founded to train and foster an educated clergy. Moreover, variations in the liturgy were abolished, the Roman Missal and Breviary (decreed in 1568 and 1570 to establish uniformity in prayers) was implemented, and the authority of bishops over parish clergy was strengthened. The measures effected significant changes in clerical practice.

As a predominantly Catholic country, Spain became an early and primary supporter of the Counter-Reformation. In 1540, a Spanish nobleman, Ignatius Loyola, founded an important new religious order: the Society of Jesus or the Jesuits. The duties of the Jesuits were to defend and advance the Catholic faith through education and discipline. Like many of their Protestant opponents, the Jesuits encouraged literary endeavors. Soon after their inception, they appeared an active force in Northern Europe, setting up schools, preaching, and spreading their influence through court circles. A strong central organization, selectivity in admitting new members, and sincere religious fervor all contributed to the Jesuits’ becoming a particularly effective force for promoting the new Catholicism in Spain.

The Counter-Reformation in Spain was also aided by the notorious Spanish Inquisition, which tried to expel Protestants from the country altogether. Historian Henry Kamen observes that together with bishops and religious orders, the Inquisition gradually brought Spaniards into the fold of the new Catholicism over the course of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

In all fundamentals nothing had changed; there were nevertheless profound differences between the new Catholicism and the old. Trent imposed upon Spanish religion a revolutionary sense of the sacred that endured into the twentieth century. Where the church had been used for communal meetings and festivities, it was now totally separated from all secular use; all religious rites, and all baptisms, were to be performed in the church and in no other place.

(Kamen, pp. 182–83)

The Counter-Reformation affected not only political and religious but artistic and intellectual life in Spain as well. Despite Spain’s reputation as a staunchly Catholic country, troubling ideas introduced by the Protestant Reformation could not be easily dismissed there or in any other European nation exposed to them. It has been argued that while the Counter-Reformation scored some notable successes, it could hardly expect to succeed in its general attempt to abort the movement of European thought away from a God-centered medieval world order towards an evolving man-centered world order. In such an environment, devout Catholics might find themselves torn between their individual consciences—which tempted them to explore a new religious sensibility—and their traditional loyalties to habitual religious practices. According to one literary historian, the conflict influenced creative expression:

A resultant state of paradoxical doubt, or paralyzed confusion, is a recurrent motif of Spanish literature in the Counter Reformation, and it gave great stimulus to a theater which frequently probed deeply in its formulation of problematic situations, but usually reached timid, “safe” and reconciliatory conclusions.… The Spanish comedia could consequently serve a double function in its society: a) homeo-pathically to purge a doubt-filled collective conscience of its feelings of confusion, and b) to leave the spectator restored in himself at play’s end by concluding on a note of reaffirmation. Thus the comedia operated as a very effective safety-valve for all sectors of society and its success was correspondingly great.

(Sullivan, p. 14)

In The Trickster of Seville, Tirso—writing during the later years of the Counter-Reformation—does indeed appear to reaffirm and uphold the view of a theocentric or God-centered world-order. While Tirso’s Don Juan is not a religious skeptic or a heretic, he nonetheless reveals an arrogant misunderstanding of the true nature of sin and repentance. Although his family and his plain-spoken manservant continually warn the young man that his misdeeds could result in his eternal damnation, Don Juan refuses to mend his way, remarking carelessly, “Plenty of time for me to pay that debt!” (Trickster of Seville, 1.904). He “trusts nonchalantly that an eleventh-hour recantation in old age will suffice, leaving him free to indulge his libertine lusts in youth” (Sullivan, p. 39). Believing that a last-minute confession to a priest will cleanse his soul and allow him to die in a state of grace, Don Juan is horrified to find himself on the brink of eternal damnation with no priest in sight. Struggling in the deadly grasp of Don Gonzalo’s stone statue, Don Juan beseeches his foe, “Give me confession! Grant me absolution!” only to be sternly informed by the statue, “No time, my friend! No time! Your time runs out” (Trickster of Seville, 3.967–68). The chorus of the dead whose songs accompany the final encounter between Don Juan and Don Gonzalo utter what might be considered the moral of The Trickster of Seville: “As long as man lives out his total span, / Let him avoid this boast, as best he can: / ’Plenty of time to pay the final debt.’ / No sooner said, the payment must be met” (Trickster of Seville, 3.939–42).

Impact

The number of subsequent versions of the Don Juan legend reveals the lasting impact of Tirso’s play, although all authors undertaking the story have added their own twists to the tale. Dom Juan ou le Festin de Pierre —by the French dramatist Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Molière—appeared only 35 years after Tirso’s play and portrayed Don Juan as “a thinking, sophisticated, self-justifying seducer rather than as a man of action,” an interpretation that proved more intellectual but less passionate than Tirso’s (Edwards in Molina, p. xxxvi). By contrast, the composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart attempted to merge Molière’s witty, cynical rake with Tirso’s passionate, reckless one in his opera Don Giovanni, first performed in 1787. This and other eighteenth-century versions tended to focus more on Don Juan’s pursuit of sensual pleasures than on the religious ramifications of that pursuit. During the nineteenth century, the Don Juan story was altered by writers influenced by the Romantic movement. In his short story “Don Juan,” German author August Heinrich Hoffman depicts the character as irresistible to women yet frustrated in his vain quest for the ideal woman and taking his frustration out on man and God. The British poet George Gordon, Lord Byron, took an entirely different and more irreverent approach in his mock-epic Don Juan, in which his hero, unlike the aggressive lover of legend, drifts passively from affair to affair; in Spain itself, José Zorrilla composed his drama Don Juan Tenorio (also in WLAIT 5: Spanish and Portuguese Literatures and Their Times). Zorilla’s drama resurrects the ruthless, reckless seducer of Tirso’s play but makes Don Juan a religious skeptic as well and has him ultimately saved from damnation by the love of a pure woman.

Although many of these later versions of the Don Juan story have become famous in their own right, The Trickster of Seville —while seldom performed today—remains vitally important as a prototype. As Gwynne Edwards writes, “It was left to Tirso to create the character of Don Juan.… The measure of his success may be gauged by the extent to which Tirso’s protagonist, the first-ever Don Juan, inspired so many later writers and musicians to produce their variations on the original” (Edwards in Molina, p. xxiv).

—Pamela S. Loy

For More Information

Gerstinger, Heinz. Lope de Vega and Spanish Drama. Trans. Samuel R. Rosenbaum. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1974.

Hughes, Ann Nickerson. Religious Imagery in the Theatre of Tirso de Molina. Macon: Mercer University Press, 1984.

Kamen, Henry. Spain 1469–1714. London: Longman, 1983.

Molina, Tirso de. The Trickster of Seville and the Stone Guest. Ed. Gwynne Edwards. Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1986.

Ruiz, Teofilo. Spanish Society 1400–1600. Harlow, England: Longman, 2001.

Sola-Solé, Josep M., and George E. Gingras. Tirso’s Don Juan: The Metamorphosis of a Theme. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1988.

Sullivan, Henry W. Tirso de Molina and the Drama of the Counter Reformation. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1976.