[In the following essay, Wade discusses de Molina's life and work, focusing on how he used his genius to serve humanity.]

Tirso de Molina (born Gabriel Téllez) died in 1648. The tercentenary of his death has occasioned a rebirth of interest in him and his work. Indeed, the resurgence of Tirsian scholarship began some years ago, in Spain, England, and the United States. The appearance of Doña Blanca de los Ríos' long-awaited volume on Tirso¹ was a climactic event that will have scholarly repercussion for years to come. The volume is the first of two which will contain Tirso's biography and the texts of all his plays; the second is scheduled to appear in 1949. The scholarly labors of Father Manuel Penedo, of Santiago Montoto, and of Fray Martín Ortúzar have contributed substantially to our knowledge of Tirso and his theater. In England, two commentators on Tirso and his art have produced recent contributions of genuine worth. Aubrey Bell's “Some Notes on Tirso de Molina”² is an attempt to review the major facts of Tirso's life and work; the essay has in general that authority and charm which Mr. Bell's efforts invariably possess, but it has also a number of features, whether in reference to Tirso's biography or to an appreciation of his plays, that, in the light of our very recent knowledge of him and his work, are of doubtful accuracy. Miss I. L. McClelland's essays in the Bulletin of Spanish Studies³ have dealt stimulatingly, and with some profundity, with certain esthetic features of Tirso's art.

In the United States, Miss Ruth Lee Kennedy began some years ago a systematic study of Tirso's theater which has resulted in findings of exceptional importance for an understanding of him and his art. Miss Kennedy's essays have dealt with the background of his comedias, the social, economic, and political milieu that brought them forth, and her persistent effort to date his plays by throwing them against this background—truly a fundamental requisite for a comprehension of his work—has resulted in the accurate dating of a number of those whose dates have heretofore been uncertain.⁴ Her recent study of La prudencia en la mujer (PMLA for December, 1948) illumines Tirso's attitude toward his dramatic material and his use of Spanish history to offer a lesson in government to the young Felipe IV; for the first time, Tirso becomes three-dimensional, a truly living person, placed in the framework of his time and its problems, a fearless fighter for decency in life and in government. Miss Alice H. Bushee and Sherman W. Brown⁵ have made welcome contributions, while Otis H. Green and others have considered Tirso and his theater in a number of studies. Joaquín Casalduero's provocative study of the Don Juan theme⁶ was received with great interest, but not all of his readers will agree with his ideas in the matter.

The immediate future of Tirsian scholarship both in the United States and abroad is bright. In Spain, Father Penedo will continue his contributions to Estudios; in particular, his proposed edition of the very significant Historia de la Merced of Tirso is awaited eagerly. Father Penedo and his fellow Mercedarians are publishing this year a special volume in memory of Tirso which contains studies written in Spain and in the United States. It will offer, among other matters, a bibliography of Tirso, compiled by Everett W. Hesse; it is hardly necessary to stress the importance of this first effort at a complete bibliography of the great Mercedarian. Miss Esmeralda Gijón is making a study of Tirso's style and language. In this country, Miss Kennedy will continue her studies in chronology and historical background; in collaboration with Courtney Bruerton, she plans an investigation of Tirso's versification. Miss Lorna Stafford and Miss Alice H. Bushee are completing a historical edition of La prudencia en la mujer, and C. E. Anibal and I hope to offer a critical edition of the Santa Juana trilogy. It is in fact only proper that Tirso, the Spanish Shakespeare,⁷ as he has been called, should receive sharply increased attention in the years to come. Mr. Bell has recently expressed again⁸ the wonder of Tirso's relative neglect through the centuries, the indifference on the part of many students of Spanish literature toward the treasure that lies in his surviving plays.

These plays, including three autos sacramentales, number a tentative eighty-four, as published by Hartzenbusch in volume V of the Biblioteca de autores españoles and by Cotarelo in volumes IV and IX of the Nueva Biblioteca de autores españoles. Two other autos are in volume XVIII. But of the total number of eighty-six comedias and autos, one comedia, La romera de Santiago, has been claimed with apparent finality for Luis Vélez de Guevara⁹, while another, La reina de los reyes, is now known to be of other authorship. This play, one of the twelve comedias of the much-discussed Segunda Parte of Tirso, has been shown by Santiago Montoto¹⁰ to have been written by the Sevillan Hipólito Vergara; Sr. Montoto's significant discovery is, one may hope, the beginning of a solution of the Segunda Parte riddle which has always perplexed students of Tirso. Thus there are seventy-nine surviving comedias which may possibly have come from Tirso's pen, but of these, only fifty-one titles are his with complete certainty (the five autos are accepted without question as his). These were published in four of the five volumes or Partes which appeared between 1627 and 1636. Of the twelve comedias of the remaining Parte, the puzzling Segunda, four are Tirso's and the others of uncertain authorship, on the evidence of Tirso's own words in the dedicatory of the volume.¹¹ Thus fifty-five surviving comedias are quite surely of his authorship, and a number of others, perhaps as many as twenty-eight, came from his pen at least in part.

The most famous play which is usually ascribed to Tirso is El burlador de Sevilla. But since it did not appear originally in any of Tirso's own volumes, it is still, in the final analysis, of debatable paternity. In some ways it is the most remarkable drama of the entire Golden Age; Miss McClelland, in two of her essays, gives it sufficient comment to bring out certain aspects of its deep significance for dramatic art. Moreover, this first of the Don Juan plays is a literary ancestor with a progeny far greater than that of any other play ever written; the Don Juan theme has surely appeared in all the civilized languages. Tirso's play has a number of technical faults and its text has been corrupted from the original probably more than Américo Castro has been willing to admit.¹² But its theme is still very much alive, and if it should eventually be granted to some other dramatist, the prestige that will accrue to him will be very great. It is unfortunate for Tirso's great reputation that not only the Burlador de Sevilla but also El Condenado por desconfiado—the best-known religious play of the Golden Age—should be only doubtfully his. Fray Martín Ortúzar has recently argued for Tirso's paternity for the play by proposing that the Condenado, written by a follower of the Thomist Zumel, could logically have come from Tirso's pen since Tirso was himself a follower of Zumel.¹³ For the present we leave to those trained in theology the decision regarding the theological ideas of the Condenado. Nor is there space here to consider the bearing these ideas may have on the authorship of the play. Fortunately for Tirso's fame, there is no doubt about his paternity of the most remarkable historical drama of the Golden Age, La prudencia en la mujer, which testifies to Tirso's genius for creating character, a gift denied, in equal degree, to all other playwrights of the Edad de oro, but one which he has utilized to the full in a number of plays. At the same time, it shows Tirso's talent for the play thesis.

The enigma of his birth is still the most puzzling thing about Tirso de Molina. Here is one of the greatest playwrights of all time, and his parentage is still a matter of doubt. Scholars have been skeptical of the belief of Doña Blanca de los Ríos that he was a Girón, an illegitimate half-brother of Don Pedro, “el gran duque,” as he came to be called. She bases her belief on a baptismal certificate which shows that a certain Gabriel, born in 1584 in the parish of San Ginés in Madrid, was given no surname except apparently that in a marginal notation later crossed out very thoroughly.¹⁴ This marginal notation Sra. de los Ríos would read as “Gabriel Téllez Girón, hijo del Duque Osuna.” The eminent scholar, Antonio Paz y Melia, she asserts, agreed completely with her in the reading of the notation. This was before the turn of the century, and the ink, presumably, had not blackened so much through action of the light as it has since. The most devastating attempt at a refutation of her reading was made by Artiles Rodríguez;¹⁵ this scholar rejected her reading for the marginal notation and hence the Osuna paternity for Tirso.¹⁶ Sr. Artiles, however, accepted the balance of the certificate as Tirso's, with the consequent assertion of his birth in 1584 in the parish of San Ginés, Madrid. Until further evidence of Tirso's parentage becomes available, it seems reasonable to agree with Sr. Artiles' conclusion. After most industrious search by Señora de los Ríos and others, no other certificate has been found which could reasonably be taken as Tirso's, and the one discovered in the parish of San Ginés may well become his by default, if for no other reason.¹⁷ The date of 1584 is supported substantially by another document that records Tirso's age: a record of the beginning of his journey to the New World in 1616. The document in question is dated as of that year, and it gives Tirso's age as thirty-four. This figure would imply his birth in 1583 rather than in 1584, but the discrepancy is too slight to have importance in a day when documentation was much less careful than in our own.¹⁸ Tirso, then, was born in Madrid, as he himself tells us more than once,¹⁹ and almost certainly in 1584, as Doña Blanca's discovery indicates.²⁰ The years from 1584 to 1600 are blank for him; there has been discovered no record to tell where he was or what he was doing. Of his family we know only for certain that he had a sister, “parecida a él en ingenio y en desdichas.”²¹

It is probable that Tirso's schooling was partly at the famous University of Alcalá, although there is no sure evidence of the fact.²² Doña Blanca de los Ríos thinks that he may also possibly have attended the University of Salamanca.²³ His first documented activity is his entrance into the Mercedarian Order; this was in 1600 or 1601, as Father Penedo has lately shown.²⁴ The next documented date for his biography is the composition date of El vergonzoso en palacio. This, presumably his first play, was written apparently in 1605 or 1606; again, it is Father Penedo who has presented the documents that seem to substantiate the fact.²⁵ Tirso thus began his playwriting at the age of twenty-one or two.

His dramatic activity continued until 1625, possibly with interruptions due to his trip to the New World in 1616 and, at other periods, because of his absorption in the affairs of his Order. In 1625 he was forbidden by Felipe IV's Junta de Reformación to write any more plays or verse.²⁶ The interdict has often been interpreted as springing from the Junta's belief in the danger of Tirso's plays to public morals; actually, there are many reasons to believe that it was a weapon used against him by powerful enemies. As the daring, indeed, rash inditer of frequent attacks on powerful figures after 1621—as many of his plays make clear—Tirso was too bold and effective an enemy to be overlooked. The exile from Madrid that was a part of the interdict was one that, with intermissions, was to last the rest of his life. We know from his own words that he was the victim of persecution of the envious and the slanderous; it is clear that he was more than the victim of his own persecution complex; that he had very real enemies who were powerful enough to undo him.²⁷

It is not probable that Tirso long observed the interdict against writing plays, although according to the preliminaries of his various Partes it is clear that he constantly needed the favor of powerful friends to gain permission for publishing them. He himself, in the preliminaries to his Tercera Parte, twice stated that he had not written plays for ten years prior to its publication—this was in 1634. But it is hardly possible to take him literally. Cotarelo has pointed out that Desde Toledo a Madrid was “concluida o retocada después de 8 de julio de 1625”; that No hay peor sordo was composed “por los años de 1625,” and that La huerta de Juan Fernández was written (or retouched?) in 1626.²⁸ Miss Kennedy agrees that No hay peor sordo was written late in 1625 or early in 1626, subsequent to the edict of the Junta de Reformación, and suggests Habladme en entrando as another play of about that time.²⁹ Sra. de los Ríos reproduced in her Enigma biográfico, p. 64, a document showing that Tirso was given nine hundred reales in Trujillo in April of 1629 for three comedias; presumably these were of recent composition, since Tirso would have sold his older plays some time before. It is not known in what year he stopped writing for the stage; the year 1639 can no longer be accepted with assurance, since the supposedly holographic manuscript of Las quinas de Portugal, dated in that year, is really not in Tirso's hand and hence is of uncertain composition date.³⁰

From 1605 or 1606 until 1625, with a lapse of at least two years because of his Santo Domingo visit, Tirso, then, wrote more or less constantly for the stage. In the preliminaries to the Tercera Parte he states that he has written more than four hundred plays in twenty years, but this may be an exaggeration. It is now quite certain that he revised or at least retouched a number of plays, and the total which he wrote may have been considerably less than the four hundred he claimed. From 1625 on he wrote further plays to a total whose number is as yet unknown. The last year in which he composed a comedia was perhaps 1630 or 1631;³¹ thereafter, there is no record of such production. Some of his plays, at least, were in great demand by the play producers; Sra. de los Ríos has published a document which reproduces a contract showing that on one occasion a play producer bought one of Tirso's comedias before it was completed.³² A number of his comedias were produced again and again. He tells us, for instance, that El vergonzoso en palacio was played by many companies,³³ while the surviving licencias of the holographic Santa Juana reveal production in many of Spain's major cities over a number of years. The popularity of his plays from 1624 to 1628 has been attested by Henri Mérimée: during that period the play producers Roque de Figueroa, Juan Acacio and Jerónimo Amella all carried comedias by Tirso in their repertoires.³⁴

Tirso wrote almost every type of play: comedy, tragedy, the palace play, the cloak and sword comedia, the play of intrigue, of history, of legend, of Biblical lore, of saints' lives, the psychological drama. His gift for the comic, which he seemed constitutionally incapable of resisting, even in his most serious plays, was unequalled; no other playwright's clowns were as funny as his. He attempted nothing original as far as the comedia's formula was concerned, being content to follow his great master, Lope de Vega.³⁵ But within the formula he was superbly original in his gift for comedy and in his capacity to create character, especially that of women. It is of course untrue that Tirso could create only feminine character, a charge often made against him. He did find the feminine heart more an enigma than the masculine, and hence more of a challenge to his curious mind. His reputation for creating outstanding women characters has come largely from his most famous comic situation; that in which a man becomes merely a pawn in a determined woman's hands. Don Gil de las calzas verdes, La villana de Vallecas, La celosa de sí misma, Marta la piadosa, El amor médico represent the situation best of all his plays. Tirso wrote such plays largely because they are amusing and, at times, rather sensational, especially when the lady of the drama dons men's clothing and pursues her faithless lover. But it must also be true that Tirso saw Spanish society dominated by its women; Doña Blanca de los Ríos has suggested tht he wrote La mujer que manda en casa as an attack on Felipe III's Queen, Margarita de Austria, because he saw feminine dominance represented in the royal household itself.³⁶ Doctor Marañón has suggested³⁷ that even Don Juan was woman-dominated; that he was the victim rather than the victimizer of his intended prey. Be that as it may, it has intrigued students of Tirso that he, a priest, should be so interested in women and that he should understand them so well. Earlier commentators on the matter saw in this fact a suggestion of his libertinism; modern students of Tirso are entirely unwilling to accept the accusation, which is completely lacking in substantiation. Tirso was a priest from the age of sixteen or seventeen; as far as we know, his personal relationships with women were, from that age on, those that came normally from his priestly duties. That these duties permitted him to be somewhat worldly in the sense that he was not cloister-confined and that he was no doubt often in the company of women-folk and their men—as in Los cigarrales de Toledo—is our good fortune; it has meant those superb dramas that so delight us today.

Tirso possessed a deep fund of theological knowledge, and this was given official recognition when he was granted the degree of Maestro by Pope Urban VIII in 1637.³⁸ His theology colors many of his writings; this is one reason for the consistent attribution to him of the doubtful Condenado por desconfiado. Seemingly out of consonance with his theological bent are his oft-expressed cynicism (occasionally as brazen as that of the picaresque novel) and an apparent heartlessness that is at times diamond-hard. To offset this hardness one finds at times a deep tenderness which is unsurpassed in the history of the drama. A moralist, he was driven by an irresistible urge to attack fraud and corruption, insincerity and cant; it was this fearless assault on corruption in high places that must have been largely responsible for the interdict of 1625.

During the years of his dramatic activity and beyond them until at least the year 1639—the date of publication of the second part of his Historia de la Merced—Tirso was busy with the affairs of his Order. As his youthful capacity grew in the matters of his profession he was given responsibilities in keeping with it. He was one of those chosen to go to Santo Domingo on business of his Order; it must have been a coveted journey. While there he “read” three courses in theology, a responsible task. This New World activity made him eligible for the presentatura,³⁹ which was granted some time before June, 1618; he had been made procurador for Santo Domingo at some time before that date.⁴⁰ He became Comendador (Prior) of Trujillo in 1626, cronista of his Order in 1632, Definidor de Castilla in that same year, Comendador de Soria in 1647. His travels took him over a great part of the Spanish peninsula; his residence is documented in Madrid, Toledo, Soria, Trujillo, Cuenca, Almazán,⁴¹ Zaragoza, and Cataluña, while he visited more or less briefly in Guadalajara, Valladolid,⁴² Salamanca, and Sevilla. His plays make one suspect that he may have seen Galicia, Italy and Portugal, while parts of the Cigarrales de Toledo possibly suggest a visit to Sardinia.

Tirso de Molina lived one of the most useful lives of his generation. In a day when literary genius was superabundant, he excelled, and he used a great part of his genius for the service of his fellow men, whether directly in the duties of his Order or in many of his plays as a satirist-reformer. At times the moral tone of his writings distresses the modern reader because Tirso lived in a day of relatively low moral tone, and he was first of all a man of his time. Even though he was one of its most intelligent and brilliant spokesmen, he was not advanced beyond his generation in the major features of Golden Age ideology, especially those having to do with the internal and external politics of Spain. He was always a Spaniard, and yet on occasion he has achieved a Shakespearean-like universality through his deep understanding of the human heart. Tirso died in one of the remote convents of his Order, an exile from his beloved Madrid and Toledo, whether disillusioned and embittered by his apparent defeat at the hands of his implacable enemies we know not. His death, formerly dated as of March 12, 1648 and believed to have been in Soria, is now known to have occurred at Almazán in that year, and some time between February 20 and 24; the recent documentation of the fact is due to the valued efforts of Father Penedo⁴³.

Notes

1. Blanca de los Ríos de Lampérez, Tirso de Molina. Obras dramáticas completas. Madrid, 1946, 1.

2. See the Bulletin of Spanish Studies, XVII, 68 (October, 1940), 172-203.

3. See XVIII, 72 (October, 1941), 182-204; XIX, 76 (October, 1942), 148-163; XX, 80 (October, 1943), 214-231. Miss McClelland's essays, amplified and with the addition of much new material, have recently been published in one volume: Tirso de Molina. Studies in Dramatic Realism. (Liverpool Studies in Spanish Literature: Third Series), Liverpool, 1948.

4. For Miss Kennedy's articles, see the Hispanic Review, X, 2 (April, 1942), 91-115; X, 3 (July, 1943), 183-214; XI, 1 (January, 1942), 17-46; XII, 1 (January, 1944), 49-57.

5. See Miss Bushee's Three Centuries of Tirso de Molina (Philadelphia, 1939) and Mr. Brown's text edition of La villana de Vallecas (New York, 1948).

6. Joaquín Casalduero, “Contribución al estudio del tema de Don Juan en el teatro español,” in Smith College Studies in Modern Languages, XIX, 3-4 (April-July, 1938).

7. The name was given him, no doubt, because of his profoundly human qualities, but there are at times verbal parallels as well that argue for a common source. For instance, Shakespeare's “All the world's a stage” has a striking parallel in Tirso. There seems, however, to be implied no borrowing on the part of either, but rather, a common source for both playwrights. The idea had become a commonplace one in classic times; see George Lyman Kittredge's edition of As You Like It (New York: Ginn and Company, 1939), xviii. Tirso's parallel is not consistent throughout with Shakespeare's, but a few lines are notably similar: Que es comedia nuestra vida, / y en ella representantes / cuantos contemplas vivientes; / con papeles diferentes / representan los mortales / ya púrpuras, ya sayales; / pero al fin es lo ordinario / que el sepulcro su vestuario / los desnude, y haga iguales … (Deleytar aprovechando, ed. 1635, I, folios 152, 153). I am indebted to Miss Kennedy for the location of the reference.

8. See note 2.

9. See F. E. Spencer and Rudolph Schevill, The Dramatic Works of Luis Vélez de Guevara (Berkeley, 1937), 110.

10. See his “Una comedia de Tirso, que no es de Tirso,” in Archivo Hispalense, Sevilla, 2a. época, VII (1946), 18-19, pp. 99-107.

11. See Cotarelo, Comedias de Tirso, I (Nueva Biblioteca de Autores Españoles, IV, Madrid, 1906), lix, n.

12. See the Castro edition of the Burlador (Clásicos castellanos, Madrid, 1932), p. xviii.

13. See Father Ortúzar's “‘El condenado por desconfiado’ depende teológicamente de Zumel,” Estudios, IV, 10 (enero-abril, 1948), 7-41. Father Ortúzar's is one of a recent series of articles on El condenado; see, for example, those by Fray Rafael María de Hornedo in Razón y Fe, 120 (mayo-agosto, 1940), 18-34, 170-191; 138 (diciembre, 1948), 636-646. The last-named article attempts to summarize the major writings on the theological intent of El condenado.

14. The certificate is reproduced photographically in Sra. de los Ríos’ El enigma biográfico de Tirso de Molina (Madrid, 1928), 33-34, and also in her Obras de Tirso de Molina, I, lxxxvii.

15. Artiles Rodríguez's study, “La partida bautismal de ‘Tirso de Molina,’” may be read in the Revista de la Biblioteca, Archivo y Museos, V (October, 1929), 403-411. C. E. Anibal made a digest and commentary on it in Hispania, XII (1929), 325-327.

16. Juan Millé Giménez, another commentator on Sra. de los Ríos’ thesis for Tirso's paternity, accepted her reading of the birth certificate without question. In his review of her El enigma biográfico de Tirso in Sintesis (Buenos Aires, III, 27 [agosto, 1929], 367-368), he suggested that Tirso's father might well have been D. Juan Téllez Girón, of some thirty years of age, a poet, a soldier of the Armada in 1588, and a man of rebellious and adventurous humor. D. Juan had built a reputation for wildness. Sr. Millé thinks that the mother, Gracia Juliana, could have been an actress of easy virtue, and that such a double ascendencia would explain well some of the principal traits of Tirso's work.

    It might be suggested that Tirso's own reticence about his birth is strong evidence for illegitimacy (though not necessarily that of a Girón). It may be that he said nothing about his paternity because he was too proud to claim it against his father's refusal to legitimize him. Of course everyone in Madrid knew who he was, and the “conspiracy of silence” which has obscured the information might seem to be a further indication that he was an illegitimate son of some high-born person. There is no record of his having been twitted about his birth, as Lope was twitted for the mediocrity of his parentage and his attempt to claim gentility. Sra. de los Ríos has remarked a number of times on Tirso's championing of the segundón and the bastardo in his plays, a significant circumstance. Again it seems that the tone of the various dedicatories of his works to his noble friends has perhaps less of the subservient in it than was common in that of some writers; that Tirso was addressing them more on a basis of equality. One must admit, however, that regardless of whether or not he was of noble parentage, his pride, one of his most positive traits, always kept him from abject servility; he was no Lope to do his contemptible act for another Sessa.

17. In her El enigma biográfico, Sra. de los Ríos chose not to confide in her readers the discovery of another baptismal certificate which her later Obras de Tirso de Molina, I contains. On page lxx of the Obras a footnote reproduces a certificate that states that a certain Gavriel Josepe López y Téllez was born in the parish of San Sebastián in Madrid on March 20, 1579. The Señora explains that this Gavriel could certainly not be Tirso; this, presumably, was her reason for failing to mention it in her Enigma. Scholars may well deplore her determination to keep silent so long about the certificate of 1579, but they will agree that of the two documents, the one dated 1584 is much more probably that of Tirso.

18. Sra. de los Ríos has reproduced the document photographically in the Revista Nacional de Educación, II, 22 (Octubre, 1942), 102, bis. See also her essay accompanying the document: “La fecha del nacimiento de ‘Tirso de Molina’,” 101-114.

19. See Cotarelo, Comedias de Tirso de Molina, I, x.

20. The 1571 or 1572 date for Tirso's birth has been thoroughly discredited. Based on the authority of a statement on a portrait of him—the portrait itself is taken to be genuine—the date is now discarded and has been replaced in scholarly discussion by 1584 or 1583, depending on the individual student's willingness to accept the 1584 baptismal certificate as Tirso's. Karl Vossler's acceptance of the 1571 or 1572 date (see Escorial, Febrero, 1941, 167-186) is surprising in a critic of his deservedly great reputation.

21. See Cotarelo, op. cit., xi. Miss Kennedy, in her PMLA study (see her footnote 29), would tentatively identify this sister as “doña María de San Ambrosio y Piña, monja en la Magdalena de Madrid.” Sister María wrote one of the laudatory poems preceding the text of Tirso's Los cigarrales de Toledo.

22. See Cotarelo, op. cit., xi-xii.

23. See her Obras, I, xxxixb, cix, cxviib, n. 1.

24. P. M. Penedo, “Noviciado y profesión de Tirso de Molina (1600?-1601),” Estudios, I, 2 (mayo-agosto, 1945), 82-90.

25. P. M. Penedo, “El Fraile Músico de ‘Los Cigarrales de Toledo,’ de Tirso de Molina,” Estudios, III, 9 (septiembre, 1947), 383-390. Father Penedo's date for the Vergonzoso supersedes that suggested by Sra. de los Ríos. In her Obras de Tirso de Molina, I, she states that the play was composed in 1611 or 1612; see her pp. xliv, xlvii, lxii, cx, 179, 298.

26. See Angel González Palencia, “Quevedo, Tirso y las comedias ante la Junta de Reformación,” Boletín de la Real Academia Espanola, XXV, 43-84. The acta referring to Tirso is dated March 6, 1625 and reads as follows: “Maestro Téllez, por otro nombre Tirso, que hace comedias.—Tratóse del escándalo que causa un fraile mercedario, que se llama el Maestro Téllez, por otro nombre Tirso, con comedias que hace profanas y de malos incentivos y ejemplos. Y por ser caso notorio se acordó que se consulte a S. M. de que el confesor diga al Nuncio [several words were crossed out and replaced by “que mande a su Provincial”] le eche de aquí a uno de los monasterios más remotos de su Religión y le imponga excomunicación mayor latae sententiae para que no haga comedias ni otro ningún género de versos profanos. Y esto se haga luego.”

27. For his own statement regarding the envy that pursued him, see, for example, Antona García (Cotarelo, I, 634a) where, as Miss Kennedy correctly suggests (op. cit., footnotes 40, 86), the Castellano 7° is Tirso; or the Cigarrales de Toledo (ed. Said Armesto, 102). See also the statement of Avila, his supposed nephew, in the foreword to Tirso's Tercera Parte (Cotarelo, op. cit., lvii, n.); it is of course Tirso rather than Avila who wrote the words. And Tirso's good friend Montalbán writes of the maldicientes who had been pursuing the former; see the aprobación of the Quarta Parte (ibid., lxv, n.) See also ibid., lxviii, the first two lines of the note of column a.

    The question of Tirso's personal relationships is one which is yet to receive study; the investigation will inevitably bring rich reward in a more complete understanding of him and his theater. Tirso found it impossible to refrain from attacking his enemies in print, from giving advice to people in high places, including the King himself, from using his plays as propaganda for his friends. Miss Kennedy's La prudencia study reveals Tirso's noble reason for composing the play as advice for the young Felipe IV, while Otis H. Green's study of the Pizarro trilogy (Hispanic Review, IV, 201-225) shows a less admirable Tirso who deliberately distorted history in order to aid some friends. I have ready for publication a study of Amar por razón de estado and of the historical event that brought it forth; the study will demonstrate Tirso's awareness of and keen interest in the matters of current import that were agitating the Court. Tirso was always interested in what was going on about him; it was part of his armament to keep alerted for possible attack on the interests of his Order, and it was a part of his dramatic creed to use his talents in the comedia as propaganda for a cause he considered just.

28. Cotarelo, Comedias de Tirso de Molina, II, xvii, xxix; I, xliii, n. 2.

29. See her PMLA study, footnote 105.

30. For a denial of the holographic character of the Quinas manuscript, see “Notes on Tirso de Molina,” Hispanic Review, VII, 71. Juan Antonio Tamayo has given the matter thorough study; see the Revista de Bibliografía Nacional, III (1942), Fascículos 1 and 2, 38-63. His findings are corroborative of those in the Hispanic Review reference.

31. For a consideration of the years of Tirso's dramatic activity, see the Hispanic Review reference of note 30. It was there suggested that Amar por señas was probably Tirso's first play. Miss Kennedy has dated this play as subsequent to 1620; see Hispanic Review, XI, 1 (January, 1943), 29-34. Since Father Penedo has shown that El vergonzoso en palacio was probably written in 1605 or 1606, this play should perhaps now be accepted as Tirso's first one.

32. See Blanca de los Ríos, “Trece documentos nuevos para completar la biografía de Tirso,” ABC, December 23, 1934.

33. See the Cigarrales de Toledo, ed. Said Armesto, 339.

34. Henri Mérimée, Spectacles et Comédiens à Valencia (Toulouse-Paris, 1913), 169-178. The Syxto 5° of page 173 is now known to be Tirso's La elección por la virtud, apparently written in 1612 and bought in September of that year by Juan Acacio (see the reference in note 32 above. The date 1632 for the document reproduced in the ABC article is an obvious misprint for 1612). Its Segunda parte, documented by Mérimée (op. cit.), has not survived.

35. To Lope he paid tribute publicly on a number of occasions; for example, in the epilogue to the Vergonzoso en palacio (Cigarrales de Toledo, ed. cit., 128) and in his play La fingida Arcadia. There is, however, some doubt whether his comments in this play were intended purely as a tribute of praise and admiration; the thrusts at Lope's Arcadia which some of the characters make were perhaps too keenly satiric for Lope's liking.

36. See her Obras de Tirso de Molina, I, 440.

37. Dr. Gregorio Marañón, “Don Juan, apuntes para su biografía,” in Cinco ensayos sobre Don Juan, Valencia, n.d., 199.

38. See El enigma biográfico de Tirso de Molina, 67.

39. Engima biográfico, 59. The presentatura was a theological degree equivalent to the bachillerato, asserts Sra. de los Ríos (Obras de Tirso de Molina, I, lxxvii). The 1780 Academy Dictionary states that it was a “título que se da en algunas religiones al teólogo, que ha seguido su carrera, y acabadas sus lecturas, está esperando el grado de Maestro. Ad Magisterium presentatus.”

40. Enigma biográfico, 54.

41. Op. cit., 53 et passim. For his residence and exile in Cuenca in 1640, see Blanca de los Ríos, “Aparece un importante documento de Tirso de Molina,” ABC, August 22, 1946. The Almazán residence receives comment below.

42. Only recently has his Valladolid visit been documented. See P. M. Penedo, “Muerte documentada de Fray Gabriel Téllez en Almazán y otras referencias biográficas,” Estudios, I, 1 (enero-abril, 1945), 203.

43. P. M. Penedo, loc. cit.