‘The Trickster of Seville and the Stone Guest’: The Dawn of the Don Juan Myth

A review of ‘The Trickster of Seville and the Stone Guest’, by Tirso de Molina; Spain, c. 1630.

Tirso de Molina’s El Burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra (The Trickster of Seville and the Stone Guest) might strike us as a remarkably creative and interesting take on the Don Juan story. But in fact it was the first. Arguably it remains the sharpest and most pointed treatment of his daring and his downfall, which has been told by Byron, Mozart, Molière and others.

The story follows Don Juan Tenorio, a nobleman whose charm and recklessness have shattered lives. In a series of encounters, he deceives, seduces and dishonours women, scorns religion and mocks morality. But he goes a step too far. He kills an upright knight called Don Gonzalo, then mocks his tomb. The statue of Don Gonzalo comes to life and drags Don Juan to hell.

In a series of encounters, he deceives, seduces and dishonours women.

But it is not a straightforward morality tale. Sin, honour, justice and other … Don Juan may embody the archetype of the libertine, a man who lives for pleasure of the moment and scorns the consequences. But behind his bluster is a biting satire on his culture’s hypocrisy. Society demands virtue from its citizens; yet its conditions allow and indeed enable men like Don Juan Tenorio to thrive. He lives by the mantra ‘Tan largo me lo fiáis’ (‘What a long term you are giving me!’) suggesting he is young and that death is still far off. In other words, he can do whatever he wants, whenever he wants, and repent for his sins later on.

Molina has a keen eye for drama. The scenes are fast-paced, vivid, filled with disguises, duels, and escapes. Each seduction carries a different tone—light-hearted one moment, sinister the next. The language is of course seventeenth-century Spanish; but it pulses with life. The characters speak with a mix of formal elegance and wit. The play is filled with little ironies.

The scenes are fast-paced, vivid, filled with disguises, duels, and escapes.

But the coming of the Stone Guest hits us as readers and watchers hard. Don Juan has, unwisely, invited the statue of the dead Don Gonzalo, the Commander, to dine with him. The moral and the supernatural merge, the statue takes on the cloak of divine justice, and the retribution he acts out is swift and brutal. Don Juan laughs in the face of his own death in a final act of self-assertion before he is consumed by the flames.

To some the women in El Burlador will more like cardboard cut-outs than rounded characters, but Molina paints them in his play sympathetically. He salutes their love, loyalty and vulnerability and sets those virtues against Don Juan’s unchecked pride and bravado. Through Isabela, Tisbea, Ana and Aminta, Molina throws light on a double standard of honour, according to which a man like Don Juan sidesteps judgement and justice for his actions while the women he seduces face social ruin. Don Juan commits the sin, but they are the ones that lose out.

Through Isabela, Tisbea, Ana and Aminta, Molina throws light on a double standard of honour.

But at the heart of the story is a discussion of freedom. Molina is concerned with its limits, and the extent to which the absolute negative freedom acted out by Don Juan is the end of the matter: for Don Juan, he suggests, is as much a slave as anyone in chains, trapped by his pride, chasing after every fleeting pleasure. True freedom, for Molina, lies not in doing whatever we please but in aligning ourselves with higher ideals. Freedom must be bounded and ordered by responsibility. Don Juan never gets this, hence his refusal to repent on several occasions, and his infernal fate.

El Burlador, then, is particular to its time but also timeless: since its central character, like Lucifer or Prometheus, thinks he can subvert the moral order and emerge triumphant. This is Molina’s point. His play is a work of fiery conviction.