EL BURLADOR DE SEVILLA. Tirso de Molina's drama, (El Burlador de Sevilla y Convidado de Piedra) ((The Gay Scoffer of Seville and Feast of the Statue)), is the parent source in literature of the famous legend of Don Juan Tenorio, the unscrupulous gallant and blasphemer, subsequently presented vari ously by Moliere and Byron as Don Juan, by Mozart as Don Giovanni, and, in Spain itself at a more recent date, by Jose Zorilla as Don Juan Tenorio in the most popular of all Spanish plays. Few characters in the history of letters have attracted the attention of so many writ ers of genius, or have been reproduced so universally and in such multiplicity of styles. In itself, however, Tirso's play is a structure less aggregation of amorous adventures, in the course of which the hero seduces a Neapolitan lady, a fisher-girl, a young peasant, and, by a base deception, Dofia Ana de Ulloa, whose father he slays. The blasphemous feast which follows, at which the statue of the Commander Don Gonzalo de Ulloa dines with Don Juan, dragging him down afterward with the tomb from which it has descended and the chapel containing it to perdition, is wholly distinct from the other episodes, which Tirso conceives after the manner of the chronicle play in a succession of loosely related incidents, without regard either to consistency of character or to dramatic action. His Don Juan is a mere vul
gar seducer, by after-thought a blasphemer, whose overthrow does not rise above the sphere of melodrama. Although Tirso must be held to rank with Lope de V (RI-a and C,al deron at the head of the Spanish romantic theatre, even the pastoral elements in this play are devoid of picturesqueness and lack the author's customary mellowness and sober im aginative charm. The story had been utilized previously by Juan de Cueva. While of un certain origm, prevailing Spanish authority traces it to Seville, where Don Juan Tenorio is said to have died at the foot of the statue of the Commander, whom he had killed, as in the play. The Feast of the Statue is derived from independent sources. The play was first printed in 1630, but has never been translated into English. Consult Cotarelo y Mori, E., in his introduction to the (Obras de Tirso de Molina' (in the Nueva Biblioteca de Autores Espasioles, Vols. IV and IX, Madrid 1906-07); Menendez Pidal, R.,