I took advantage of a 24-hour stopover in Madrid on the way home from my recent trip to Andalucía to see El burlador de Sevilla, the original Spanish play about Don Juan. According to University of Wisconsin professor R. John McCaw, the play’s exact origins are unknown. However, it was most likely written — in Madrid, not Sevilla — in the early 1620s, by the playwright Tirso de Molina.
- El Burlador De Sevilla English Version
- El Burlador De Sevilla English
- El Burlador De Sevilla English Summary
Since I majored in linguistics rather than Spanish, I had never read El burlador de Sevilla, and in fact didn’t know much about Golden Age theater. So before heading to Spain I bought a copy of Prof. McCaw’s edition of the play and studied it seriously. Just so you know what a good student I still am, after all these years out of school, here is a scan of one page showing how I marked up the book. What I learned was so interesting that I’d like to share it with you.
The full title of the play is El Burlador de Sevilla y Convidado de Piedra (The Trickster of Seville and the Stone Guest).It is the first significant literary version of the Don Juan legend. Tirso de Molina EL BURLADOR DE SEVILLA Y CONVIDADO DE PIEDRA This edition of the play is intended to be a reliable edition but is, under no circumstances, to be considered as a thorough critical edition complete with variant readings, extensive notes, nor any of the valuable expository discussion that is us ually found in such.
Golden Age playwrights like Tirso de Molina had to be incredibly skilled. They did what any playwright does — tell an exciting story, develop their characters, and so on — while at the same time fitting their Spanish into a set of specific rhyming patterns. As Prof. McCaw explains in his introduction, most of El burlador fits into one of six rhyming patterns, each defined by four parameters:
- the number of lines in the pattern;
- the number of syllables per line (playwrights “fudge” by merging or extending some syllables);
- the type of rhyme: whether consonants matter (consonance), as in the rhyme of España, engaña, and cañanear the top of the page in the image above, or not (assonance), as in the sequence rosa…olas…sola…locas…ondas…sombras…alfójar…adora in Tisbea’s speech at the bottom of the page;
- the rhyming pattern within the lines, e.g. ABBA (lines 1 and 4 rhyme, also lines 2 and 3).
After marking up the entire text — this isn’t as crazy as it sounds, since the play is less then 100 pages long — I tallied how often each rhyming pattern was used. Here’s what I found:
- The most common pattern — the default, really — was the redondilla, four lines of eight syllables each with a consonant ABBA rhyming scheme.
- The second most common pattern was the romance, an indefinitely long sequence of eight-syllable lines with an assonant xAxAxA rhyming scheme, i.e. every other line rhymes. Tisbea’s speech above is an example. Spanish is a great language for loooooong romances because so many words rhyme! (The assonance helps.) In the play, I counted:
- 3 romances with a-a rhymes;
- 2 each with e-a and o-o rhymes;
- 1 each with o-a (above), i-a, and a-e rhymes.
- Acts II and III each contain a sequence of octavas reales: eight lines of eleven syllables each, with an ABABABCC rhyming pattern.
- Act II contains one sequence, and Act III two, of quintillas: five lines of eight syllables each. Amazingly, Tirso de Molina added an additional layer of structure by varying his quintillas‘ rhyming patterns. The quintillas in Act II alternate between ABBAA and AABBA, while those in the Act III sequences are all ABABA.
- Act I has a sequence of décimas: ten eight-syllable lines with a complex consonant rhyming pattern. The end of this sequence can be seen in the image above.
- Act III has a sequence of sextillas: six alternating lines of seven and eleven syllables (7-11-7-11-7-11) with consonant ABABABCC rhyme.
The rhyming complexity increases as the play progresses. Act I contains three patterns: redondillas, romances, and décimas. Act II contains four: redondillas, romances, octavas reales, and quintillas. And Act III contains five: redondillas, romances, quintillas, sextillas, and octavas reales. What a tour de force!
I read the play a first time for its language and rhyming, and a second time to focus on its plot and characters. On the second read-through it became clear that although Don Juan was a lecher, his uncle was equally evil in his own way. He was a reprehensible enabler, helping Don Juan escape and lying to cover his tracks. The women in the play were uniformly admirable, and also strong, once they’d realized they’d been conned. (This cast of characters inevitably reminded me of today’s politics.)
As you can imagine, after so much preparation I was excited to finally see the play. The performance I saw was at Teatro de la Comedia, Madrid’s theater for classical theater. (See my “Bad Spanish” post about their tickets, and also the YouTube clip below.) It was an excellent production! I found Don Juan himself incredibly sexy — I could see why so many women fell for him — but in the scene where his father appears, he becomes sullen and quiet. The implication (for me) was that unresolved “Daddy issues” were at the heart of his neurosis. My favorite scene, Tisbea’s mad scene after Don Juan betrays her, was powerful. It was a real treat.
Surprisingly, after I’d worked so hard to get to know the rhyming schemes, they receded into the background once the play was “live”. The lines just sounded like beautiful Spanish.
El Burlador De Sevilla English Version
I left the theater with a strong urge to learn more about…Shakespeare! Having never taken a Shakespeare course in college, I feel guilty that I now know more about Tirso de Molina than our greatest English playwright.
El Burlador De Sevilla English
The drama’s power comes from its rapid pace. San Diego Opera is staging two outdoor drive-in shows this month: the first is its annual One Amazing Night concert and the second is the comic opera 'The Barber of Seville… It's based on the first play of 'Le Barbier de Seville,' the three-part story of Figaro written by French playwright Pierre Beaumarchais. In this version the drama is heightened by Don Juan’s attractive qualities—his lively character, arrogant courage, and sense of humor (his ways of seducing women). 'Largo al Factorum,' Figaro's opening aria in the opera's first act, is considered one of the most challenging operas for a baritone to perform, due to its brisk time signature and convoluted rhyme structure. Word Count: 173. also known as 'The Homer of Seville . Tirso de Molina was, with Lope de Vega and Calderón, one of the great dramatists of 17th century Spain, which produced a theatre as vital rich and as varied as its Elizabethan counterpart. The Seducer/Rogue/Trickster of Seville by the Spanish dramatist Tirso de Molina. Last Reviewed on June 19, 2019, by eNotes Editorial. The principal characters of Tirso de Molina's (Gabriel Tellez') El Burlador de Sevilla (The Trickster of Seville… But comedy in a foreign language is not very effective. The Situational Drama of Tirso de Molina. by Tirso de Molina in an English version by Roy Campbell Photo by: Andre Reinders Theatre St. Thomas flings you across Spain to witness the action-packed exploits of the charismatic libertine Don Juan in Tirso de Molina’s poetic comedy, The Trickster of Seville and His Stone Guest! . The Seville was a . World's Largest Online Community. The Seducer of Seville and the Stone Guest and The . Retrieved 2016-08-01 . www.spainisculture.com/en/obras_culturales/el_burlador_de_sevilla.html Easil 1630 the seducer of seville translated in the trickster of seville and the stone guest attributed to . The Barber of Seville is one of the greatest operas, and comic operas especially. Download >>Read Online >>el burlador de sevilla resumen the trickster of seville full text english el burlador de sevilla espanol moderno la vida es sueno pdf the trickster of seville pdf el burlador de sevilla y convidado de piedra pdf el burlador de sevilla english pdf el burlador de sevilla english full text Don JUAN Tenorio, su hijo. (PDF) . The Seducer of Seville and the Stone Guest Written by Date premiered c. 1616-1630 Original language Subject Genre Setting 14th century The Trickster of Seville and the Stone Guest (: El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra) is a play written. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trickster_of_Seville_and_the_Stone_Guest
El Burlador De Sevilla English Summary
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