Theatre
Don Juan Tenorio
José Zorrilla · 1844
Opening lines
Don Juan
Cuál gritan esos malditos!
Pero mal rayo me parta
si, en concluyendo la carta,
no pagan caros sus gritos!
How those cursed fellows shout!
But may lightning strike me down
if, once I finish this letter,
they do not pay dearly for their shouting!
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from archive.org
Synopsis
Seville, on a carnival evening. A year earlier, don Juan Tenorio and don Luis Mejía bet on which of the two would kill the most men in duels and seduce the most women; they meet again at the Laurel inn to compare their lists, and don Juan wins. Stung, don Luis objects that he has never seduced a novice; don Juan takes up the challenge and promises to add his rival's fiancée to his tally. In the room, the commander don Gonzalo de Ulloa, whose daughter Inés, raised in a convent, had been promised to don Juan, has overheard everything and immediately breaks off the engagement.
Context
The play was written in some twenty days and first performed in Madrid on 28 March 1844, without great success. The author had sold the printing and performance rights to the publisher Manuel Delgado, shortly before the first performance, and received nothing from the performances that followed. He acknowledged what he owed to El burlador de Sevilla, attributed to Tirso de Molina; the play also borrows from Alexandre Dumas's Don Juan de Maraña. Its manuscript is held in the library of the Real Academia Española.
Who it is for
A drama in verse, in two parts and seven acts, the second part of which takes place five years after the first.
Prizes and reception
Since the nineteenth century, the play has been performed every year in early November, around All Saints' Day, in Spain as in Mexico.