Tirso de Molina – Encyclopedia Britannica

Spanish dramatist
Written by: Ivy Lilian McClelland
Alternative Title: Gabriel Téllez

Tirso de Molina, pseudonym of Gabriel Téllez, (born March 9?, 1584, Madrid,
Spain—died March 12, 1648, Soria), one of the outstanding dramatists of the Golden Age of
Spanish literature.

Tirso studied at the University of Alcalá and in 1601 was professed in the
Mercedarian Order. As the order’s official historian he wrote Historia general de la orden de
la Merced in 1637. He was also a theologian of repute. Guided to drama by an inborn sense
of the theatrical and inspired by the achievements of Lope de Vega, creator of the Spanish
comedia, Tirso built on the “free-and-easy” prescriptions that Lope had propounded for
dramatic construction. In his plays he sometimes accentuated the religious and philosophical
aspects that attracted his theological interest; at other times he drew on his own topographical
and historical knowledge, gained while traveling for his order through Spain, Portugal, and
the West Indies. Sometimes he borrowed from the vast common stock of Spanish stage
material, and at other times he relied on his own powerful imagination.

Three of his dramas appeared in his Cigarrales de Toledo (1621; “Weekend Retreats
of Toledo”), a set of verses, tales, plays, and critical observations that, arranged after the
Italian fashion in a picturesque framework, affect to provide a series of summer recreations
for a group of friends. Otherwise his extant output of about 80 dramas—a fragment of the
whole—was published chiefly in five Partes between 1627 and 1636. The second part
presents apparently insoluble problems of authenticity, and the authorship of certain other of
his plays outside this part has also been disputed.

The most powerful dramas associated with his name are two tragedies, El burlador de
Sevilla (“The Seducer of Seville”) and El condenado por desconfiado (1635; The Doubted
Damned). The first introduced into literature the hero-villain Don Juan, a libertine whom
Tirso derived from popular legends but recreated with originality. The figure of Don Juan
subsequently became one of the most famous in all literature through Wolfgang Amadeus
Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni (1787). El burlador rises to a majestic climax of nervous
tension when Don Juan is confronted with the statue-ghost of the man he has killed, and
deliberately chooses to defy this emanation of his diseased conscience. El condenado por
desconfiado dramatizes a theological paradox: the case of a notorious evildoer who has kept
and developed the little faith he had, and who is granted salvation by an act of divine grace,
contrasted with the example of a hitherto good-living hermit, eternally damned for allowing
his one-time faith to shrivel. Tirso was at his best when portraying the psychological conflicts
and contradictions involved in these master characters. At times he reaches Shakespearean
standards of insight, tragic sublimity, and irony. The same qualities are found in isolated
scenes of his historical dramas, for example in Antona García (1635), which is notable for its
objective analysis of mob emotion; in La prudencia en la mujer (1634; “Prudence in
Woman”), with its modern interpretation of ancient regional strife; and in the biblical La
venganza de Tamar (1634), with its violently realistic scenes.
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When inspired, Tirso could dramatize personality and make his best characters
memorable as individuals. He is more stark and daring than Lope but less ingenious, more
spiritually independent than Pedro Calderón de la Barca but less poetic. His plays of social
types and manners, such as El vergonzoso en palacio (written 1611, published 1621; “The
Bashful Man in the Palace”), are animated, varied in mood, and usually lyrical. At the same
time, however, Tirso’s style is erratic and sometimes trite. In pure comedy he excels in cloak-
and-sword situations; and in, for example, Don Gil de las calzas verdes (1635; “Don Gil of
the Green Stockings”), he manipulates a complex, rapidly moving plot with exhilarating
vitality. His tragedies and comedies are both famous for their clowns, whose wit has a tonic
air of spontaneity. Naturalness in diction suited his dramatic purpose better than the
ornamental rhetoric then coming into vogue, and generally he avoided affectations, remaining
in this respect nearer to Lope than to Calderón. Tirso was not as consistently brilliant as these
great contemporaries, but his finest comedies rival theirs, and his best tragedies surpass them.

Link: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Tirso-de-Molina