SOURCE: “The Roots of Desire in El Burlador de Seville,” in Forum for Modern Language Studies, Vol. XXII, No. 3, July, 1986, pp. 232-45.

In the following essay, Evans discusses how de Molina, through his characters and language, exposes the cruelty and horror of human desire in El burlador de Sevilla.

El burlador de Sevilla shares with Tirso's other plays a preoccupation with stereotypes of role and gender, but whereas, say, in El castigo del penséque, La mujer por fuerza, and La firmeza en la hermosura his focus is on viragos and timid or inept men, in this play attention is fixed primarily on an ideal of virility that had taken root throughout Europe by the beginning of the seventeenth century. As the burlador not just of Sevilla but also of España (p.655a), Don Juan seems in some respects through one particular dimension of his complex persona...