it in a way that emphasizes the play’s underlying psychological intention. Thus, Mireno, who has used the more noble sounding name of Dionís while in Magdalena’s employ, discovers that his name is indeed Dionís. Through Mireno/Dionís, Tirso implies that an individual can attain his true, more noble identity only when he is able to overcome the limitations that he places on himself.

Except for the noble background of its characters, The Bashful Man at Court resembles a Spanish Golden Age genre referred to as the comedia de capa y espada, or cloak-and-sword play . These plays, which derive their name from the costume worn by the actors playing the leading male roles, have complicated plots dealing with the courtship of one or more sets of middle-class youths who devise ingenious measures to overcome the obstacles to their love. The young protagonists frequently resort to disguise and other forms of deception, which often backfire with comic results. Though there are frequent duels, they never produce serious results, since cloak-and-sword plays (seventeenth century Spain’s equivalent to the modern situation comedy) invariably end happily with at least one wedding.

Marta la piadosa

Such plays provide a natural framework for Tirso to create female characters endowed with ingenuity and initiative, and the protagonist Marta of Marta la piadosa (pious Martha) is a nice illustration of how he uses the opportunity to its fullest advantage. Marta, who is in love with Don Felipe, deftly overcomes almost overwhelming obstacles to their marriage. When her father decrees that she must marry a wealthy old man named Urbina, she circumvents this decision by feigning religious vocation. Moreover, she uses this same feigned vocation as grounds to have Don Felipe, disguised as a Latin teacher, visit her regularly. With Felipe’s help, she maneuvers her sister Lucía (who is also in love with Felipe) into a relationship with Urbina’s son. The play thus ends, typically for the genre, with multiple weddings.

Don Gil of the Green Breeches

Probably Tirso’s best cloak-and-sword play, Don Gil of the Green Breeches again centers on the clever maneuvers of a quick-witted and active female protagonist, Doña Juana, who, having been courted and abandoned by Don Martín, assumes a series of false identities in order to impede Don Martín’s courtship of the wealthy Doña Inés. Doña Juana assumes both male and female identities. Disguised as Doña Elvira, she maligns Don Martín’s character; disguised as Don Gil, she wins Inés’s affection herself, thus causing Inés to lose interest in Martín. In the course of the play, the fictitious Don Gil assumes increasing importance and attracts various other characters to assume the same disguise. The climactic moment of the play occurs when four “Don Gils,” each dressed in green breeches, appear on the stage simultaneously, producing a moment of uproarious confusion, which, when finally cleared up, prepares the way for a denouement involving three weddings.

The Trickster of Seville

Tirso’s lighthearted cloak-and-sword plays provide a sharp contrast to his serious masterpiece The Trickster of Seville. As has been mentioned, the authorship of this play is uncertain. It was not included in the series of collected works published under Tirso’s direction but appeared instead, attributed to him, in a collection of works by various dramatists published in 1630. Such collections are notoriously unreliable sources concerning the authorship of the works they publish, but in the case of The Trickster of Seville, critics, basing their theories on similarities between this work and other works known to be written by Tirso, generally accept the attribution as accurate.

The play is noteworthy, among other reasons, because it is one of the earliest works based on the legendary character Don Juan. Modern scholars (such as philosopher José Ortega y Gasset) often see Don Juan as the archetypal personification of unrestrained vitality, and there is much in The Trickster of Seville to support such an interpretation. Examples include the opening scene in which Don Juan, “a man without a name,” materializes in the darkness of the Duchess Isabela’s bedroom, and the scene in which he emerges from the ocean in order to seduce the fishing peasant girl, Tisbea. It is clear, however, that Tirso (consciously, at least) views Don Juan as a malign disturber of social order. For Tirso, Don Juan’s lack of discipline and his influential relatives’ abuse of their position in order to protect him from punishment are destablizing social forces that must ultimately be punished. In The Trickster of Seville, the punishment is of divine origin. In the play’s conclusion, Don Juan is dragged off to Hell by the statue of a man he has killed in a duel, and the Spanish king, on being informed of this, pronounces it a just punishment from Heaven.

Prudence in Woman

Tirso’s most famous historical drama, Prudence in Woman, blends the theme of the abuse of power, which is evident in The Trickster of Seville, with that of the resourceful woman, which is dramatized in The Bashful Man at Court, Marta la piadosa, and Don Gil of the Green Breeches. Based on incidents occurring during the early years of the reign of Fernando IV (1285-1312), the play is an encomium to his regent mother María de Molina’s restrained and sagacious use of power in order to guide the Castilian kingdom through desperately trying times.

The play’s treatment of Fernando’s advisers, who, in order to improve their own lot, intentionally deceive the young king by giving him false advice, is particularly interesting in the light of the previously mentioned conflict between Tirso and Spain’s current royal favorite, the count-duke of Olivares. Indeed, much of the plot of Prudence in Woman corresponds in some detail to conditions and incidents in Spain at the time of the play’s composition, and there can be little doubt that the work is an expression of Tirso’s worries regarding what he saw as an unhealthy political situation. As theater, this play is less successful than the other works discussed. Its plot is highly repetitious, and its tone is overtly didactic. Quite possibly, both defects may be attributed to a lack of artistic distance—to a too intimate involvement of the author in the material.

The Saint and the Sinner

The authorship of The Saint and the Sinner—like that of The Trickster of Seville—is uncertain. This play was first published in 1634, under Tirso’s direction, in the second volume of his collected works. In the prologue of this volume, Tirso remarks that only four of the twelve dramas that it contains are by him; the remaining eight are by authors whom he fails to identify. Because two of the plays contained in this volume can be identified as Tirso’s because of the mention of his name in their closing lines, the chances are only 20 percent that any of the remaining ten are by him. Despite these odds, the authorship of The Saint and the Sinner continues to be assigned to Tirso, and many critics see this work as a companion piece to The Trickster of Seville.

In many ways, the protagonists of these two works are diametrically opposed. Don Juan is a wanton libertine, while Paulo of The Saint and the Sinner is an ascetic hermit. Don Juan is overly confident, while Paulo is lacking in confidence. In spite of these differences, both share the fate of eternal damnation.

Paulo is damned because he fails to trust God. Though he has long lived a virtuous and religious life, he does not feel confident of his salvation and, following a disturbing dream, prays for a sign to show him what his ultimate fate will be. His prayer is answered not by God but by the Devil in the guise of an angel. The Devil tells Paulo that his fate will be the same as that of a man from Naples named Enrico. On going to Naples and learning that Enrico is a thief who is guilty of both rape and murder, Paulo despairs and abandons his religious life to become an outlaw. Ironically, Enrico is eventually converted, and at the end of the play his soul is shown born aloft while Paulo is consumed by flames.

While, from a modern point of view, The Saint and the Sinner may seem a bit puzzling, it is an accurate dramatization of the fundamental Christian dogma of salvation by faith. It is probably no accident that the protagonist’s name is an ironic reflection of that of the apostle Paul, whose writings emphasize this dogma. The Pauline message is that salvation is a divine gift that cannot be earned through good works; Paulo’s tragic flaw is that he does not understand this message.

Tamar’s Revenge

Based on a biblical account in 2 Samuel, Tamar’s Revenge dramatizes the rape of King David’s daughter Tamar by her half brother Amnon and his subsequent murder by Tamar’s brother Absalom, who wishes to avenge his sister’s lost honor. As might be surmised from this outline of its plot, the play is typical of the Senecan tragic style, popular in Spain at the time, which sought to amaze the audience with spectacular violence. This is particularly true of its ending, in which the slain Amnon’s bloody body is revealed lying among food spread on a banquet table.

This denouement should not, however, be interpreted as pandering to a bloodthirsty public’s desire for titillation. By having Amnon speak of Tamar throughout the play as a morsel of food and by building into the work numerous other uses of food imagery, Tirso makes clear that Amnon’s sin is his unrestrained appetite. It is thus appropriate that Absalom and Tamar accomplish their revenge by inviting him to a banquet and converting the banquet table into an executioner’s block. The form of Amnon’s punishment is thus closely related to his sin; he is the victim of his own appetite. In essence, Tirso implies that sin is its own punishment.

In the light of this implication, the drama’s treatment of Absalom is particularly interesting. Throughout the play, Absalom answers his father’s pleas for mercy with the demand for justice. Tirso’s audience was familiar with the biblical account of Absalom’s rebellion against his father and his execution by one of David’s soldiers—again in spite of his father’s pleas for mercy. Thus, in one sense Absalom can be seen as the victim of his own refusal to show mercy.

For seventeenth century viewers this would have been particularly interesting because they could not have failed to perceive Tamar’s Revenge as an indictment of Spain’s honor code, which held husbands, fathers, and brothers responsible for avenging—through the murder of the offending party—acts dishonoring any female members of their family. Because the avenging party in Tamar’s Revenge is David’s rebellious son Absalom, there can be little doubt that Tirso condemns this code as a hypocritical sham. Moreover, by showing Absalom as the victim of his own refusal to show mercy, he emphasizes the contrast between the honor code’s dependence on justice and revenge and the Christian concept of mercy.