Abstract
Fray Gabriel Téllez, el maestro Tirso de Molina, was born in Madrid c.1583, about the time Shakespeare began his theatrical career in London. In 1601 he took religious vows in the order of Nuestra Señora de la Merced. In 1613–1614, a few years before Ben Jonson published the first folio of his Works (1616), he wrote El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra, which was first published in an edited volume of plays by Lope de Vega. Tirso (the pseudonym means “the shepherd’s staff”) may have written over 400 plays, 86 of which survive. He was named Prior of the convent of Soria in 1645 and died in 1648.
Abyss of Hell! I call on thee,
Thou wild misrule of thine own anarchy!
—Calderón de la Barca, El mágico prodigioso
translated by Percy Bysshe Shelley
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- 1.
The Mercedarios order was founded in the thirteenth century. They were Spanish friars who offered themselves as hostages for the return of Christian prisoners captured during the Moorish Wars.
- 2.
Manuel de Sande, ed., Doze comedias nuevas de Lope de Vega Carpio, y otros autores (Barcelona: Gerónimo Margarit, 1630).
- 3.
All citations to the plays and prefaces, given parenthetically in the text with volume and page numbers (Roman and Arabic, respectively), are from The Bodley Head Bernard Shaw: Collected Plays with Their Prefaces (London: Max Reinhardt, 1972).
- 4.
Bernard Shaw, The Black Girl in Search of God and Some Lesser Tales (London: Constable & Co., 1948), 188.
- 5.
Bernard Shaw, “The Trials of a Military Dramatist,” in The Portable Bernard Shaw, ed. Stanley Weintraub (New York: Penguin Books, 1986), 218. Originally published in Review of the Week (4 November 1899).
- 6.
Gustavo A. Rodríguez Martín, “The Genesis of Shaw’s Alhambra” (forthcoming).
- 7.
See, for example, Enriqueta Harris and Nigel Glendinning, “British and Irish Interest in Hispanic Culture” in Spanish Art in Britain and Ireland, 1750–1920: Studies in Reception in Memory of Enriqueta Harris, ed. Nigel Glendinning and Hilary Macartney (Woodbridge: Tamesis, 2010), 8–9.
- 8.
Owen Jones, The Alhambra court in the Crystal Palace: erected and described by Owen Jones (London: Crystal Palace Library, 1854).
- 9.
Bernard Shaw, Immaturity (London: Constable, 1931), 71–72.
- 10.
Michael Holroyd, Bernard Shaw, 1898–1918: The Pursuit of Power (New York: Random House, 1989), 67.
- 11.
Eric Bentley, ed., The Classic Theatre: Volume Three, Six Spanish Plays (New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1959), 484.
- 12.
Diccionario de la lengua española, Real Academia Española, burla 1, available at http://dle.rae.es/?id=6JS4jA6.
- 13.
See Oscar Mandel, ed., The Theatre of Don Juan: A Collection of Plays and Views, 1630–1963 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1963); Ángel Flores, ed., Spanish Drama (New York: Bantam Books, 1968); and Derek Walcott, The Joker of Seville and O Babylon! (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1978).
- 14.
R. L. Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1886), 107. Available at https://archive.org/stream/bub_gb_xZHv4CWgWaEC.
- 15.
Spanish comedias are usually divided into three “acts,” called jornadas, or “journeys.”
- 16.
Tirso de Molina, El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra, ed. Carmelo Santana Mojica (San Juan, PR: Editorial Universidad de Puerto Rico, 2010). All references to the text of the play, unless otherwise noted, are to this edition, with page numbers indicated parenthetically in the text.
- 17.
All translations from Tirso’s El burlador de Sevilla are by the author.
- 18.
Santana Mojica, ed., El burlador de Sevilla, xviii–xix.
- 19.
The composition of Tirso’s play dates from 1613–1614. See Santana Mojica, xii–xv.
- 20.
This etymological connection was acknowledged as soon as the play was published. See, for example, Max Beerbohm’s review of the first edition of Man and Superman (Constable), where he explains that “the name of this play’s hero is John Tanner, corrupted from Don Juan Tenorio,” in “Mr. Shaw’s New Dialogues,” Saturday Review, 12 September 1903. Reprinted in David Cecil, ed., The Bodley Head Max Beerbohm (London: The Bodley Head, 1970), 369.
- 21.
Jorge Luis Borges, Biblioteca personal (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 2000), 86. See also Wilson in this volume.
- 22.
Shaw also acknowledges the influence of a poem by Robert Buchanan (“The Devil’s Case: A Bank Holiday Interlude”) in which the devil is pictured as a merciful hero. See Raymond S. Nelson, “Shaw and Buchanan,” ELT 12, no. 2 (1969): 99–103.
- 23.
Don Álvaro by Ángel de Saavedra (1791–1865) was the basis for Verdi’s La Forza del destino.
- 24.
Ángel Valbuena Prat, Historia del teatro español (Barcelona: Editorial Noguer, 1956), 509.
- 25.
José Zorrila, Don Juan Tenorio y Traidor, inconfeso y mártir (Barcelona: Ediciones Planeta, 1990), 73.
- 26.
Lope de Vega, Arte nuevo de hacer comedias en este tiempo. Miguel de Cervantes Virtual Library. Available at http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/obra-visor/arte-nuevo-de-hacer-comedias-en-este-tiempo%2D%2D0/html/ffb1e6c0-82b1-11df-acc7-002185ce6064_4.html.
- 27.
The original lines from Lope’s essay are as follows:Verse
Verse “Lo trágico y lo cómico mezclado, y Terencio con Séneca, aunque sea 175 como otro Minotauro de Pasife, harán grave una parte, otra ridícula, que aquesta variedad deleita mucho: buen ejemplo nos da naturaleza, que por tal variedad tiene belleza.” 180
- 28.
Another religious connection is also worth noting, for Don Juan Tenorio is staged all over Spain on, the day traditionally associated with the dead (“Día de los difuntos”).
- 29.
Alexander A. Parker, The Allegorical Drama of Calderón (Oxford: Dolphin Book Co., 1968), 75–77.
- 30.
John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress. Facsimile Edition (New York: Baker & Taylor, 1878), 1, 3. Available at https://archive.org/stream/pilgrimsprogress1878buny.
- 31.
Parker, 32; Percy B. Shelley, Selected Poetry, ed. Neville Rogers (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1968), 413–419.
- 32.
Parker, 32.
- 33.
Archibald Henderson, George Bernard Shaw: Man of the Century (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1956), 716–717.
- 34.
Calderón de la Barca, “Loa para La segunda Esposa y Triunfar muriendo,” in Obras Completas III: Autos Sacramentales (Madrid: Aguilar, 1967), 425–427.
- 35.
Henderson, 583n11.
- 36.
Bernard Shaw, “On the Principles that Govern the Dramatist,” in Shaw on Theatre, ed. E.J. West (New York: Hill and Wang, 1961), 116.
- 37.
G.K. Chesterton, George Bernard Shaw (London: John Lane, 1910), 196. Available at https://archive.org/stream/georgebernardsha00ches. Bernard Shaw, “Playhouses and Plays,” in Shaw on Theatre, ed. E. J. West, 182.
- 38.
Holroyd, 79.
- 39.
Robert Brustein, The Theatre of Revolt: An Approach to the Modern Drama (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1964), 79.
- 40.
Chesterton, 216.
- 41.
Ibid., 221.
- 42.
Samuel M. Waxman, “The Don Juan Legend in Literature,” Journal of American Folklore 21, no. 81 (1908): 201.
- 43.
Carl Henry Mills, “Man and Superman and the Don Juan Legend,” Comparative Literature 19, no. 3 (1967): 218.
References
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———. 1948. The Black Girl in Search of God and Some Lesser Tales. London: Constable & Co.
———. 1986. The Trials of a Military Dramatist. In The Portable Bernard Shaw, ed. Stanley Weintraub. New York: Penguin Books.
Stevenson, R.L. 1886. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.
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Walcott, Derek. 1978. The Joker of Seville and O Babylon! New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Waxman, Samuel M. 1908. The Don Juan Legend in Literature. Journal of American Folklore 21 (81): 184–204.
West, E.J., ed. 1961. Shaw on Theatre. New York: Hill and Wang.
Zorrilla, José. 1990. Don Juan Tenorio; Traidor, inconfeso y mártir. Barcelona: Ediciones Planeta.
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Giner, O. (2022). Bernard Shaw and the Spanish Myth of Don Juan. In: Rodríguez Martín, G.A. (eds) Bernard Shaw and the Spanish-Speaking World. Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97423-7_2
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