(ca. 1580-1648) dramatist
Tirso de Molina was the pseudonym of Gabriel Tellez, who was born in Madrid and educated at the University of Alcala. He joined the Order of Mercy in 1601 and was made the superior of the monasteries in Trujillo in 1626 and Soria in 1645.
Despite his religious profession, Tirso de Molina was very active in the literary circles that flourished during the Spanish Golden Age. He wrote between 300 and 400 plays during the course of his life, of which about 86 survive. The plays range from historical and religious dramas to palace comedies and romantic tragedies. Tirso de Molina was greatly influenced by the Golden Age dramatist Lope de vega, particularly in his principles of dramatic composition. However, Tirso de Molina’s plays are individualized by his own theological interests, which often surface in themes of the human will in conflict with the divine, and by his geographical and historical knowledge, gathered from the trips he took throughout Spain, Portugal, and even the West Indies.
Tirso de Molina also tried his hand at short prose, releasing a collection of stories called The Gardens of Toledo in 1621 and in 1635 Pleasure with Profit, a collection of stories, plays, and verse. Tirso de Molina’s real skill, however, emerged in his plays, which were made remarkable by the vivid characters he created, whose psychological torments he portrayed with accuracy and depth. Some of his more memorable dramas were Prudence in Woman (1634) and The Rape ofTamar (1634), which were both chillingly realistic in their portrayal of human agony. In contrast, in The Bashful Man in the Palace (1621) and Don Gil of the Green Stockings (1635), events unfold with a merry and light-hearted rapidity.
Tirso de Molina is most celebrated for his two most sophisticated and mature plays, El condenado por desconfiado (The Doubted Damned, 1635) and El burlador de Sevilla (The Seducer of Seville, also translated as Don Juan and the Stone Guest, 1634). In the second of these, the infamous character Don Juan makes his first appearance in dramatic literature. Drawing on popular legends of the wily seducer, Tirso de Molina created a literary figure that would inspire several later writers and dramatists, including moliere, Byron, and George Bernard Shaw, as well as move Mozart to compose Don Giovanni.
The Don Juan of Tirso’s play is very different from later versions of the character. He is not the middle-aged Casanova but rather a very young and inexperienced man. In The Seducer ofSeville, he searches for his own limits and explores the limits of the society in which he lives in order to transgress them. His character, in essence, is a reflection of the aristocratic young Spaniards of Tirso de Molina’s day. In her introduction to Don Juan of Seville, Lynne Alvarez writes:
It is the blind thoughtlessness, the youthful arrogance of this famous character that ultimately destroys him. Because it never occurs to Don Juan he will encounter a situation which he cannot somehow talk his way out of. Aristocratic Spaniards could talk their way out of just about anything. . . . Just as one could travel from wealth to rags at the snap of an imperial finger, so one could transform oneself from great sinner to great saint via a well-spoken confession.
Tirso de Molina’s portrayal of Don Juan did not meet with absolute approval; the council of Castile denounced him as a “corrupter of public morals” in 1625. Later, however, Tirso de Molina’s General History of the Order of Mercy (1637), a work he undertook as part of his role as the order’s official historian, established him as a respectable theologian. As a playwright, he was for a long time eclipsed by the popularity of calderCn de la barca, but Tirso de Molina is now considered an outstanding figure of 17th-century Spanish literature. His ability to scale the heights and depths of human experience has caused some critics to compare him to William shakespeare, and his mastery of a number of genres ranging from prose and poetry to drama and fiction has established him permanently in the history of Spanish letters.
English Versions of Works by Tirso de Molina
Damned for Despair. Translated by Lawrence Boswell. Hygiene, Colo.: Eridanos Press, 1992.
Don Juan of Seville. Translated by Lynne Alvarez. New York: Playwright’s Press, 1989.
Don Juan: The Beguiler of Seville and The Stone Guest. Translated by Max Oppenheimer. Lawrence, Kans.: Coronado Press, 1976.
The Rape of Tamar. Translated by Paul Whitworth. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1999.
Works about Tirso de Molina
Albrecht, Jane White. Playgoing Public of Madrid in the Time of Tirso de Molina. New Orleans: University Press of the South, 2001.
Galoppe, Raul. Tirso de Molina: His Originality Then and Now. Edited by Henry Sullivan. Toronto: Dovehouse Editions, 1996.
Sola-Sole, Josep M. Tirso’s Don Juan: The Metamorphosis of a Theme. Edited by Georges E. Gingras. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1989.
