Episode 315: "Don Juan" by Moliere, Introduction and Act 1

Summary

The Literary Life Podcast

Episode 315: "Don Juan" by Molière, Introduction and Act 1
February 10, 2026 | Hosts: Angelina Stanford, Thomas Banks (with Cindy Rollins absent)

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Episode Overview

This episode marks the beginning of an in-depth series on Molière's play "Don Juan," focusing on its background, influences, and a close reading of Act 1 (with a foray into the start of Act 2). Hosts Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks provide literary and historical context, unpack character archetypes, and read and discuss key scenes—always with an eye to understanding how the play fits into the larger tradition of Western (and global) literature.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

Setting the Stage: Molière, Don Juan, and Comic Tradition

• Molière’s Legacy: The hosts contextualize Molière as a scandalous, innovative French playwright. "Don Juan" was written in 1665, following the controversial success of "Tartuffe."
  • Quote (Thomas, 18:53): “This play [...] does kind of push the envelope of what can be done in a stage comedy... [Don Juan is] an outright atheistic character... a worldly sort of false charm and false refinement—a comical send-up of the glamour of evil.”
• Restoration Comedy & French Influence: Restoration-era drama in England drew from French theater, especially Molière, after the Puritan ban on theater ended.
  • Quote (Thomas, 21:20): “The style of drama that came back with Charles II [...] has a very sort of French influence... Molière is all over Restoration drama in England.”

Archetypes & Stock Characters

• Don Juan as Archetype: The character’s origin is traced to the Spanish play "The Playboy of Seville and the Stone Guest" by Tirso de Molina, with Molière’s Don Juan remorseless and more atheistic than earlier versions.
  • Quote (Thomas, 25:12): “Molière makes Don Juan much more remorseless... in Tirso de Molina’s original, Don Juan talks about how eventually I will repent... Molière gets rid of that.”
• Commedia dell’Arte Roots: Many characters (Sganarelle, Pierrot) come directly from the Italian commedia tradition, as do traits like the trickster servant and the bumpkin.
  • Quote (Thomas, 30:59): “Even the name Sganarelle is not a name that any French person would have… these are characters from the commedia dell’arte.”

Literary Analysis: Pleasure, Hypocrisy, and the Game

• Physical Appetite & Amorality: Don Juan is ruled by his appetites—“a man of the belly” (43:30)—and views seduction almost as a vocation.
  • Quote (Don Juan, read by Thomas, 48:10): “What do you want us to bind ourselves for good to the first object that captivates us?... Every beautiful woman has the right to charm us... I feel a heart in me fit to love the whole world, and, like Alexander, I could wish there were other worlds so that I might extend my amorous conquests there.” (49:29–50:51)
• Hypocrisy and Satire: Molière makes Don Juan both charming and hypocritical, playing on the idea that a villain’s charisma is not an endorsement by the author.
  • Quote (Thomas, 27:03): “It is true that Molière... did get in—the religious authorities viewed him with kind of a gimlet eye. He was popular at court... but if it had been up to the Archbishop of Paris, he might have found the censorship laws turned against him.”

Thematic and Cultural Context

• Society’s Morals & Court Life: The play mirrors the hedonism of Louis XIV's early court—where seduction was “a game amongst his courtiers” (29:09–30:41).
• Parody of Chivalry: Don Juan as a ‘perverted knight-errant’—he journeys not for noble adventure, but for conquest.
  • Quote (Angelina, 80:06): “It’s very much like a knight-errant, kind of, who has to constantly find new adventures... probably a parody.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

Commonplace Quotes

• Thomas’ Pick (10:58): “Where the imagination is concerned, there is no room for collective authority.” —Hugh Kingsmill
  • “Great books are not written by committees,” Thomas reflects (11:25).
• Angelina’s Pick (13:43):
  • A passage from "Death at the President’s Lodging" about the loss of the university’s transcendent purpose post-WWI.
  • “Don’t you think we could be a dangerous, unbalanced caste once the purposes have gone and the standards are vanishing?” (16:50).

Key Dialogues, Scenes & Character Sketching

• Opening Monologue—Sganarelle on Tobacco & Don Juan’s Character (35:35–41:41):
  • Sganarelle: “...Between you and me, I’m afraid that she’s ill repaid for her love, ...you see the greatest villain that the earth ever bore. A madman, a dog, a devil, a Turk, a heretic who doesn’t believe in heaven, hell, or werewolf, who spends his time like a real brute beast, one of Epicurus’ swine...” (39:31)
• Don Juan’s ‘Philosophy’ of Love (48:10–50:51):
  • “Constancy is good only for nincompoops... I feel a heart in me fit to love the whole world, and, like Alexander, I could wish there were other worlds so that I might extend my amorous conquests there.”
• Comic Parody of Apology (65:00–66:46):
  • Don Juan’s convoluted, insincere rationale for abandoning Elvira: “...I left only to flee you, not for the reasons that you may imagine, but from a purely conscientious motive...” (66:46)

Parallels & Intertextual References

• Spiritual Parody: Don Juan “spying on happy couples” compared to Satan in the Garden from Paradise Lost (58:10).
• Vices Personified: Don Juan as the image of Lechery from Spenser’s Faerie Queene—the combination of lust, jealousy, and inconstancy (59:22–62:43).
• Comedy Roots: Parallels are drawn to Shakespeare, Plautus & Terence, and even Dickens (shipwreck as dramatic device).

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Segment Timestamps

| Segment | Start Time | Key Notes | |-------------------------------|------------|-------------------------------------------------------------------| | Welcome and Housekeeping | 00:18 | Literary Life mission, conference recap, upcoming events | | Commonplace Quotes | 10:11 | Thomas and Angelina’s literary selections | | Introducing Molière & Don Juan| 18:32 | Molière’s significance, the play’s origins, literary landscape | | Archetypes & Comic Tradition | 30:59 | Commedia dell’Arte, Shakespeare, stock characters | | Don Juan’s Worldview | 43:30 | Philosophies of pleasure, Epicureanism, Don Juan’s monologue | | Dramatic Reading: Act 1 | 35:35 | Sganarelle’s introduction, Don Juan’s entrance, comic banter | | Don Juan & Elvira’s Confrontation | 63:00 | Emotional showdown, Don Juan’s “repentance” speech | | Country Bumpkins & Farce (Act 2)| 69:43 | Shipwreck, rural comic relief, Don Juan’s serial seductions | | Don Juan as Comic “Knight-Errant”| 80:06 | Archetype analysis, satire of chivalry | | Closing & Next Steps | 80:42 | Preview of coming discussion, connection to Byron, “farce” | | [Poetry Reading & Outro] | 82:41 | (skipped, per guidelines) |

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Noteworthy Analysis & Takeaways

• Molière’s Don Juan is both a hilarious and disturbing figure—a portrait of unrepentant appetite dressed in the wit, rhetoric, and armor of the age’s courtly hypocrisy.
• The play stands as a bridge between Spanish tragicomedy, commedia dell’arte, and the emerging English Restoration style—bringing archetypes and stock figures into a new register of social satire.
• Discussion draws deeply on comparative literature, tracing the influence of European comic tradition through Roman, Renaissance, and neoclassical lines—“the tree of stories” (from Tolkien).
• Gender, reputation, pleasure, and the game: The hosts illuminate how Don Juan’s conquests are performed as much for self-image and the preservation of myth as for pleasure itself—a satirical mirror to his audience.

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For the Next Episode

• Acts 3–5: The coming discussion will follow Don Juan’s further exploits and ultimate fate, with a focus on how the play’s legacy shapes later iterations (e.g., Byron’s "Don Juan") and what “farce” truly means in this context.

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“The Literary Life is for everyone because, in the words of Stratford Caldecott, to be enchanted by story is to be granted a deeper insight into reality.” (Angelina, 00:18)

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Transcript

[A]

This is not just another book chat podcast. Lifelong reader Cindy Rollins joins teachers Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks for an ongoing conversation about the science, skill and art of reading. Well, explore the lost intellectual tradition and discover how to fully enter into the great works of literature. Learn what books mean while delighting in the sheer joy of imagination. Each week we will rescue story from the ivory tower and bring it to your couch, your kitchen and your commute. The literary life is for everyone because in the words of Stratford Caldecott, to be enchanted by story is to be granted a deeper insight into reality. Join us for an ever unfolding discussion of how stories will save the world. This is the Literary Life Podcast. Hello and welcome to the Literary Life Podcast. I'm Angelina Stanford and here with me, as always, always, is my silent half. I'm not going to say you're my better half. My silent half. The mysterious Mr. Banks.

[B]

Better than being Scanarel, I guess.

[A]

Better than being anybody in this play. Today we're kicking off our series on Moliere's play Don Juan, which is, strangely enough, called Don Juan when Byron gets a hold of it. But that's a story for a few minutes from now. Welcome, welcome. I'm excited to talk about this play. This is my first time reading it. This is another Mr. Banks pick. And I don't know what I expected, but I don't think I expected it to be so funny.

[B]

It's more rambunctious, I think, than you might anticipate. Yeah, I mean, most people probably come to this story knowing it through Mozart's opera, I'm guessing, but this is a bit more earthy and farcical in a lot of respects.

[A]

Farcical, okay. And we can define some of these terms in. In just a minute, but we're here fresh off the Success of the 8th Annual Literary Life Conference, and a lot of people are saying it's our best conference ever and that the student panel we had this year just absolutely hit it out of the park.

[B]

Was the best part.

[A]

Yes, exactly. I worked very hard on my talk, guys, for you to say the student panel was the best part. No, I'm really proud of those kids. The.

[B]

They did very well. I kept thinking as I watched their several. Man, I should have thought of that. It was. Yeah, I was kind of turning green with. With envy at some of their insights.

[A]

And, yeah, they did us proud. They were. They were amazing. And it's not too late for you to pick up those recordings. If you missed it, go to HouseOfHumaneLetters.com and, and pick those up. They're yours to keep. So. Yeah, I know. I think it was a really, really good conference. In fact, I'm just feeling like we have come out of the gate in 2026 really strong. Like the schedule for January, super strong. I mean, Jason Baxter, vegan Goyan, Michael Drought topping the charts with his book. I mean, that, that, that podcast, that was amazing.

[B]

Yeah, it's like he, he seems like he should be too successful to hang out with us, right? Yeah.

[A]

But we have so much more good goodness. Good goodness. Well, I'm not the poet here, you are, but we have so much goodness coming from Michael Drought here in the future. So stick around, for sure. And we're also coming up close here to registration at House of Humane Letters. If you've been thinking about joining us for one of our year long classes, you can go over the website. We've got all the course descriptions up for next year. For our year long classes, we haven't yet put up our summer schedule and we haven't put up the semester long classes yet that Dr. Baxter and Dr. Drought will teach because we're still working out the details. There's lots of schedules to, lots of schedules to coordinate and Dr. Baxter will constantly fly off to Italy and be out of, out of pocket. So we've got the year long classes up there. So you can head on over there and take it, take a look at that. And then of course, we're continuing on with our monthly webinars. And I am really excited about the webinar for February. Do tell.

[B]

Do tell.

[A]

Yeah. So we've, if you've been hanging around us for any amount of time or gone to some of our conferences or taken some of our other webinars, you'll know that our approach here is not Western lit. We are very much in the universal theory of literature and we believe that that TRUL encompasses the entire globe. And so we've given webinars on Chinese literature and its influence and we have classes coming up this year. Two more webinars will be about the Asian literary tradition, which I'm excited about. But in keeping with that, we're constantly called back to how much these story patterns truly are universal and how much the Western literary tradition is not to be understood in a vacuum, but is simply one branch in the tree of stories, to use Tolkien's phrase. Right. It's not the tree. And then there are other branches. It is one branch. English literature, French literature, with the Western tradition is one branch on the tree of stories. And, and we have neglected the other branches for far too long. So I'm very excited to see the Asian tradition come in. So this webinar is going to be about the Middle Eastern literary tradition and adding another branch to that tree. And one of our HHL graduates who now works for us and is getting a advanced degree in class, but she's also got a minor in Persian and Persian studies. And she, she discovered something amazing that we all got excited about, which is that the Horse and his boy by C.S. lewis is actually based on a Persian tale, a number of Persian tales, and that C.S. lewis is actually quite deliberately trying to bring in the Eastern tradition into the west via this story. And his portrayal of the Middle east is very often misunderstood. He gets maligned and slandered and called a racist because people don't understand that he. This, this story is actually a love letter to Persia. It's not racist at all. He's pulling from actual Persian story tropes in the things that he does, but we don't know enough of the literature to be able to do to understand what he's doing. So on February 25, we're going to attempt to remedy this with a webinar taught by Ms. Ella Hornstuck. And this is, this is actually a line from one of the Persian stories, Stories Tell of the lion. The Persian tale of the Horse and his Boy. That's going to be February 25th. Let me go ahead and read her official description, and I probably have some hard words I can't pronounce that are Persian, but I'll do my best. Less well known than the Narnia books, dedicated mostly to the Pevensy siblings, the Horse and His Boy is a tale of lost and recovered identity that traverses a foreign desert landscape filled with Oriental gardens, bustling marketplaces, fishermen with mouths full of the words of poets, sages, tyrannical kings and battle worn heroes inconveniently appearing on horseback to retard the journey of the Narnians and our protagonists. Is the setting of this book merely coincidence? Or might its very Middle Easternness tell us something about how to read this story? There is a great tree of stories from which each tale draws, whether intentionally or not, and its Eastern branches are of equal importance to its Western ones. There are many figures and adventures, not only in the Horse and his Boy, but in all of the Narnia books, which recall very distinctly tales and legends of the Persian tradition. If Lewis is telling us something about how to read all stories through the world of his Narnia books, He might be opening the door to the Middle east, to us. Through the horse and his boy, join Ella Hornstra to discover a world of talking horses, enchanting storytellers, white demons, and great golden lions that exists in the Persian Book of Kings. The stories tell of a lion, and that lion might be Aslan on the prowl through the pages of Narnia, or Rumstum, on the prowl through his trials to free king and country from the grasp of a deadly curse. We will see just how familiar Louis was with these Persian tales and how great of a silent role they may play in our own familiar tradition. Let us discover together just how much of the east is in Fornornia and the North.

[B]

That was actually one of my. One of my favorite stories when I was a kid. Rustum and Sohrab, which is one of the great myths of. Of Persia, of course, you know those tales. Yeah, well, it was. It was in the Golden Book of Myths and Legends and. Yeah. And, yeah, I, of course, had no idea what the Shahnameh was at that time or Ferdowsi. But, yes, that's. That's a really great story.

[A]

Yeah, I'm excited about that. Again, that's February 25th. You can go to HouseOfHumaneLetters.com and register for that webinar. All right. Well, yes, we've got a lot of exciting things going on this year, and then more goodness to come. Actually, I have been working on the webinar and mini class schedule for the whole year. It's an embarrassment of riches is what it is, Mr. Banks.

[B]

I think so. I think so.

[A]

I mean, when you've got the likes of Jason Baxter and Michael Drought and Dr. Phillips and Jen Rogers and others, that we. We have a very, very deep bench, as I like to say, all the time. And when you've guys calling you up and saying, hey, I'd like to do this and hey, I'd like to do that, you know, suddenly the calendar seems very small. Like how we got to fit this all in.

[B]

If you need a mascot for the team, my afternoons are open. You know, just give me that call.

[A]

I'd love to see you with a giant foam finger. Let's be real. All right, let's. If you knew the podcast, this is the part of the podcast where we share a commonplace quote from something we've been reading. Mr. Banks, how about you?

[B]

Yes. Mine is from the English essayist and biographer Hugh Kingsmill, who. I don't need to name all of his books, but I'll just name the One with the most interesting title. He compiled a very well put together anthology of invective and verbal abuse that.

[A]

Is so up your alley.

[B]

Yeah, I have a copy downstairs took me a very long time to find. Anyway, with no further comment. Quote. Where the imagination is concerned, there is no room for collective authority.

[A]

Huh?

[B]

Yeah. Hugh Kingsmill.

[A]

What does that mean?

[B]

I guess that where literary creativity is in action, attempts to canalize it into one sort of ideological usefulness or other are doomed to either fail or wreck the workings of the imagination in the process. For the reason that, I guess maybe the fact that great books are not written by committees.

[A]

Okay, I see what you say.

[B]

I think that's imagination.

[A]

The world of the imagination is huge and you can't try to wrangle it into small box. Sure, yeah. Okay, I get that. All right, well, my commonplace quote, of course, I'm going to have a backstory. Check that off on your bingo card. Angelina tells a backstory. You guys know I'm a huge fan of the Golden Age detective novel. I. If you've been to my house, you've seen I have an entire Golden Age detective novel section of our library, including some first editions that I'm very proud of. And I continue to expand as I explore that. And this is where it's going to be funny, because I read for a living. And trust me, that's not a bad thing. I love that I get paid to read. There are times, though, when it's hard for my brain to clock off, right? Like, it always feels like I'm on the clock because even when I'm relaxing and reading, I'm still thinking, oh, I could talk about this on the podcast. I could put this in a class. So I've been trying to just have, as a side fun, read a classic detective novel just for fun. And, like, I'm like, I'm not going to talk about it in my class. I'm not going to talk about it on the podcast. I'm just going to read it. I got through one book, he who Whispers by John Dixon Carr, which was, you know, fantastic. And I didn't talk about it in the class.

[B]

I think you read that in like a day or something.

[A]

It was like a day and a half. But I devoured. You gave it to me for Christmas. I did, and I devoured it in January. So then I decided that I would take a crack at some books I had purchased that I hadn't read yet. I'll tell you about this in a second. But the upshot of it is I Started reading it and then re. Immediately started putting flags in it for things I wanted to talk about in my classes. And so here we are. Succeeded with one book of not tying it into my work and I failed on the second book. But nonetheless, this book is really good. So this is an author. He is a Golden Age detective author, writing in the 1930s and on in England. He's one of the Oxford set. His pen name is Michael Ennis, but his actual name is Jim Stewart and he was a professor at Oxford. He taught the classes on Joseph Conrad and James Joyce and he actually wrote the volume in the Oxford History of the English Language series, the same series C.S. lewis wrote for. He wrote the volume on.

[B]

I think it's called Eight Modern Novelists.

[A]

Yeah, right. Modern being like 1940. Yeah. So. So he is an academic and he also dons the detective hat. And so I had picked this up, actually I started collecting these because I had read about them. And the first one is called Death at the President's Lodging and it's a. It's a murder on Oxford. And I picked it up because I had read that one of the characters is an Anglo Saxon professor and it is quite cl. Clearly Tolkien. And he's only in one scene and it is a hundred percent him. It is a hundred. He's lying on the sofa taking a nap and he's got sweets, Anglo Saxon, which we own that on his chest, sleeping. And he's. He's kind of disheveled and he's got a speech impediment and, you know, they're all kind of teasing him and it's. It's definitely Tolkien. But having said that, reading this book, they keep talking about the most fascinating things, particularly how the mission of the university has changed after World War I. And honestly, there's so many echoes of like that hideous strength, which comes a little bit after the same sorts of conversations about that that I'm currently pursuing a rabbit hole to figure out what the connection is between Jim Stewart, C.S. lewis and, you know, is this just something that's in the air at the time everybody's talking about the university has lost its way? Or is there an actual know point by point connection? We're tracking that down. Anyway, let me set the stage for this. This quote, and it's a very long quote, but I'm not going to read the whole thing, just going to read part of it just to give you a little taste of why I got excited about this. So the detective is called in, one of the professors have been murdered and none of the professors want to even accept the fact that it could be one of their own who has committed this murder, right? It has to be an outside influence because we are the dons. And if you know anything about the history of the university in England, it was a little monastery, right? That's why dons were bachelors for so long. You were committed to a monastic scholarly life and you were committed to a transcendence ideal. That was the purpose of the study, right? It wasn't just how to get a job, job training, you know, marketable skills, but this was a life of the mind, in many ways synonymous to the life of the contemplative mind of a mon. Right. It's just, you know, the monks are, are pursuing it with these sacred texts and you know, the dons are pursuing it with the, with the secular text. But it's all toward this transcendent understanding of reality. So the detective is interviewing one of the guys and the guy basically brings up, so you think one of us could actually be dangerous. And so then he has like this long, two or three page long monologue about how things have changed at the university. But I'm just going to give you the closing paragraph of this. You know, where we come from here, once we derive, I mean, we are clerks, medieval clerks, leading this mental life that is natural and healthy only to men, serving a transcendental idea. But have we that now? And what then does all this thinking, pouring, analyzing, arguing become but so much agony of pent up and thwarted action, the ceaseless driving of natural physiological energy into narrow channels of mentation and intellection. Don't you think that's dangerous? Don't you think we could be a dangerous, unbalanced caste once the purposes have gone and the standards are vanishing? Don't you think it.

[B]

See, I find it really easy to imagine one professor wanting to kill another. That wind bag and the faculty. Meaning I could drive a knife through his ribs.

[A]

And this is why I run the faculty meeting.

[B]

But to go back to that passage, things like that in books, you know, reflections on how one section or another of society is doing. Getting by, losing sense of itself. I find things like that much more interesting in most detective stories than the murder itself.

[A]

Same almost always.

[B]

The murder itself is something I don't pay that much attention to.

[A]

Me too. I'm sitting here collecting clues. I am just like absorbed in the world of Oxford. No, And I think that's what the best golden age detective novels do. That's why I like Dorothy Sayers so much.

[B]

Yeah, I Never heard of this guy before. You mentioned him. I remember you, you took a volume or two of his on a vacation a few years ago and you were reading me bits and pieces. And he sounds like the kind of. He has the sort of mental atmosphere that I could appreciate, though I still haven't actually cracked one of his books.

[A]

Okay, well, we are going to get started now on Moliere's play Don Juan. And like I said, this is a Mr. Banks pick and I am letting him teach me along with all of you about this play. So, Mr. Banks, why don't you start off. We have done a Moliere play before on this podcast. We did Tartuffe. Was it last year?

[B]

Last year? I think it was last year, or.

[A]

Maybe it was two years ago.

[B]

And this, by the way, was written a year after Tartu. So just on the back of that, what the French would call success du scandal, Tartuffe became a very popular play. But it was also, you know, local authorities did try to shut it down as well, just because it was a little bit naughty like, like everything that Moliere wrote. And he wrote this as his follow up. This play which is also for the time even. And the, the 17th century theater was not exactly puritanical in most ways, but even by the standards of the time, it does kind of push the envelope of what can be done in a stage comedy. Because there's, it's, it's one of, it's one of the relatively few major French plays from this century which has an outright atheistic character in it. And this is in, in Tartuffe, Moliere was exposing one particular sort of hypocrisy. And here it's. I think you could say he's sort of exposing the flip side to that, another form of hypocrisy. But this one a worldly sort of false charm and false refinement, false allure and the glamour of a comical send up of the glamour. Glamour of evil, I guess you could say.

[A]

I know that this is a French play and the development of French drama is different than in English, but I kind of want to say that when you get to English restoration comedy, it's also a great deal bawdier. Yeah, there's a.

[B]

More like an almost affected worldly cynicism. Yeah. Which this is written in 1665. By this time the theaters have reopened in England and actually at major development on the English stage. Pregnant with possibilities, Women can now act. Yeah, women.

[A]

Well, let's take a step back just in case somebody's brand New to this idea. So you have, you know, Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, and then you have the English Civil War and the Puritan Commonwealth. And they shut down the theater.

[B]

Yes, yeah. For about 20 years, roughly.

[A]

And then when there's the Restoration, which is why it's called the Restoration theater, when the King is restored, the monarchy's restored, the Puritans are overthrow. And when drama comes back, it sort of comes back with a vengeance and.

[B]

Also with a new set of influences, because the style of drama that came back with Charles ii, actually, Charles II had. Because he had been living abroad, cooling his heels in France and the Low Countries for a while, and the type of comedy that is introduced into Britain has a very sort of French influence. I mean, in fact, there's, oh, William Wycherley and one or two other Restoration playwrights. They lift plots from Moliere. Like the Plain Dealer is an adaptation, a loose adaptation of Moliere's Misanthrope, and there are others as well. So Moliere is all over Restoration drama in. In England, if you know where to look for his influence, you can see.

[A]

That there's a sort of disenchantment with the Puritans going on. And so themes of hypocrisy. Yeah.

[B]

Appearing. Appearing outspokenly religious, whether it's outspokenly Catholic or outspokenly Protestant, becomes a source of much fun to a lot of the writers of the age, Even to the religious writers of the age, interestingly, like, I mean, John Dryden was a very religious man in his fashion, but he wrote this type of play as well.

[A]

Right, right.

[B]

And he wrote a. He wrote a play with a hypocritical Spanish friar called the Spanish Friar. And. Yeah. And you could point to other examples quite, quite easily.

[A]

Oh, I mean, even John Milton, that great Puritan, was extremely disenchanted.

[B]

Yeah, John Milton. I mean, it's interesting. Maybe it's sort of the Puritans. It sort of encapsulates something of the religious experience of the apes, that John Milton, who is a man who's. You could say he's intoxicated on the thoughts of the divine, but he did not attend any worship service in the last, I think, few decades of his life. I mean, he was basically a church of one.

[A]

So the point is, it's not that all these playwrights were immoral. They're just playing with new themes. And I. You know, we. We live in an age that takes. Well, we just take everything so deadly serious. And I think we forget that the reason a play is called a Play is because they are playing.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And they are playing with all kinds of things, language and tropes and ideas, and you can't take it too seriously. And that's why you can read about a reprobate man like Don Juan and laugh.

[B]

Hopefully.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, hopefully.

[B]

I mean, if you read this as something, you know, very, very serious, then you kind of entered in by the wrong door, I guess. It does have a certain darkness, though.

[A]

It does.

[B]

We will get to that later. But, yes, it does have something of that. And again, you see that in Mozart's opera. But about the origins of this play, Moliere did not invent the Don Juan character, who was about a generation old at this point. Don Juan makes his first appearance in actually a Spanish play by a monk, believe it or not, there was a Mercedarian friar by the name of Tirso de Molina. He was a really prolific playwright. And he introduced Don Juan in. I cannot remember the name of the play in Spanish, but in. In English, it's the Playboy of Seville and the Stone Guest. And this play was wildly popular in Spain and became kind of an international success as well. And different versions of it were basically stolen, inspired, or straight outright lifted in France, in Italy and elsewhere.

[A]

Copyright laws.

[B]

Yeah, copyright laws. It's so fun, like when you can just, like, lift another guy's work, change one or two details and call it your own. But, yeah, copyright details did not exist.

[A]

At all, especially across country lines.

[B]

Yeah. And as Moliere, he does introduce some changes of his own. Moliere actually makes the Don Juan character in this play much more remorseless than he was in Tirso de Molina's original. Because in Tirso de Molina's original, it's interesting, all throughout the play, Don Juan is talking about how eventually I will repent of my rakishness, my shameless seductions of women. I will become a good Catholic, and I will do penance for my sins and God will forgive me, because that's his job. And you might say, well, that's like. Isn't that kind of a mercenary attitude towards religion? Well, I mean, of course it is. But it does give it dramatic interest that, you know, this person who is living a life of absolute moral disreputability could have sort of a moral insurance plan at the back of his mind. Moliere gets rid of that, though. Moliere, he's. He's. Even though he's still Don Juan, he's. He's a court of Louis xiv, sort of Don Juan. He's a libertine he doesn't really pretend. He will pretend not to be when it serves his interest. He is hypocritical. But when he's speaking sincerely, I mean, he doesn't give a fig for religion. He has no intention of pretending.

[A]

Exchange with his servant, his manservant, the manservant says, you know, this is mockery against heaven to treat the holy sacrament of marriage this way. And he said, heaven is between me and God. You stay out of it.

[B]

Sure. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, he's. He's. He's a much more cavalier sort of figure as Moliere presents him. And some people have said that Moliere makes him too charming and that Moliere is basically on the side of the devil in this one.

[A]

I said the same thing about Milton.

[B]

And about so many others.

[A]

Good.

[B]

If you, if you have. If you have a charismatic villain, you must like him. Shakespeare must be on the side of Iago. So, no, I don't think that's a. That's a just reading of the player, the character. But it is true that Moliere, you know, he did get in. The religious authorities viewed him with kind of a gimlet eye. He was popular at court and with the king. Louis XIV actually liked his play. So that is probably the reason why his career went to such heights as it did. But he was. If it had been up to the Archbishop of Paris, he might have found the censorship laws turned against him more. More brutally.

[A]

You know, this might be an interesting bit of context. Those of you who've heard me talk about fairy tales or have taken the fairy tale class, have heard me talk about how the French writer Charles Perrault, he rewrote the tales with these very intense moralizing and actually put a moral in the end. It's at this time, and he specifically is taking the tales because he wants to warn young girls against exactly this kind of man who really does exist. And so, for example, he. He very much changes Little Red Riding Hood, which is in the Grimm's version, Little Red Cap, and she's a little girl. And Charles Perrault changes her to be a little older, she's wearing the writing habits of women at the time. And so when he adds the whole. Like the wolf being in the bed, and oh, what big ears you have, and oh, what big lips you have. All the better to kiss you. Oh, what big teeth you have. All the better to devour you. So he. He adds all of that kind of seductive elements to Little Red writing. And then he puts in a moral at the end, which is that sometimes wolves look like handsome young men at court. And if you get in bed with a wolf, you will be devoured. Which I always say in my class was definitely something people needed to be told, but leave the fairy tales out of it. But nonetheless, that's the same time period. So this, this kind of guy is in the imagination of a lot of people.

[B]

Oh, yeah. And, and the, this is in the 1660s when I think it's important to know that Louis XIV was a young king. I mean, he would have been 26, 27 years old when this play makes its debut. And the moral tone that when, that he set for his court at this time in his life was not really a high one. And there was, I mean, seduction was kind of a game amongst his courtiers. And this will all change later on in life after he marries for a second time. And his new wife, Madame de Maintenon, is a deeply, almost severely religious woman. And he becomes kind of in imitation of her, severely religious in turn. And it imposes a kind of a more strict religiosity. But in the 1660s and 1670s, it's let Paris be gay, as the proverb used to have it. And yeah, there's, there's a lot of. There were even like. I don't know how seriously this was meant, but like some really dark stuff. Black masses were actually. It became. Yeah, there was like kind of a fashionable, what should we say, a fashionable ironic Satanism among certain members of the upper nobility, including one woman who was at one time a mistress of the king. So like very, very high ranking people engaged in deliberately blasphemous acts. And so, so Versailles was. Yeah, this is, this is not a time when it was exactly a shining light of virtue, as you might imagine.

[A]

Not saying, hey, everybody, go be too.

[B]

No, no. But I mean, he's. I think that. I think that he is presenting a set of characters that perhaps some of the fashionable spectators of this play might sort of see mirror images of themselves.

[A]

At the same time. These are some stock characters as well. Oh, yeah.

[B]

And yeah, and even the name like Scanarelle is not a name that any French person ever would have. It's a. I mean, these are characters from the commedia dell'. Arte. Pierrot is another Piero is. He is always the lovelorn bumpkin. Usually he's in love with Columbine or Columbine, I think, and she's usually shunning him for someone else, someone a bit more polished, someone a bit more Don Juan, like in Fact.

[A]

Right, right. And Shakespeare pulls from a lot of those same comedia.

[B]

Yeah. They're kind of just in the lifeblood of European drama in the 16th and 17th century. So. Yeah. If you want to know where. If you want to know where a lot of these plots and character types originated, read up a bit on the commedia dell'. Arte.

[A]

Right. That's where you get, like, the stock pageant characters there and the commedia dell'.

[B]

Arte, of course, and we've probably said this before, but that goes back to the Roman comedy of Plautus and Terence and, you know, the idea of the trickster servant and the. A kind of playful tone of amorality as well.

[A]

This felt very Roman new comedy to me when I started reading it.

[B]

There's a lot of that in it. Yeah. And I mean, Moliere. I mean, his. Much of his literary education consisted of. I think he went to a Jesuit school and reading and also having to act out scenes from Plautus and Terence. And they were popular writers, not just because they're fun and they are. Plautus and Terence, at their best, are great, great comic playwrights. But it was wrongly believed by a lot of Renaissance humanists and pedagogues that this type of dialogue was how the Romans actually spoke. So if you want to get a sense of, like, Roman street life and, you know, just how the ordinary Romans conversed with one another, read the comedies of Plautus and Terence and have your students act them out. And of course, I mean, these are. They're writing in, you know, versified literary language, but it's like, don't read Shakespeare.

[A]

To find out how to listen to.

[B]

Yeah, but exactly. If you think that. If you think that the average Elizabethan bargeman on the Thames spoke in blank verse, then, I mean. No, that was not.

[A]

I know I'm always saying that to my students, like, Shakespeare is not hard because people back then talk weird. It's. It's poetry. No, no, no one spoke like that. And we should also say, too, that Plautus and Terence and the Roman new comedies, they are tremendous influence on Shakespeare.

[B]

Yeah. Also in, like I said, in the. Just sort of the veins and the lifeblood of the comic theater.

[A]

Exactly. So. And we talked a lot about the Roman comics. If you want to know more about that. In our series we did on PG W House, was it the Code of the Worcesters? Yes, The Code of the Woosters. We talked about that. We read that as a Roman comedy. We talked about the stock characters and explored that there.

[B]

Yeah, A lot of A lot of Woodhouse aficionados say that Jeeves is basically a Roman servant Transported to the 20th.

[A]

Century, the helpful servant who is the one who kind of unravels the whole thing and helps the lovers get together and bring everybody from chaos to order, just as he does in the Worcester story. And that kind of character is in Shakespeare, too. In Taming of the Shrew, for example, Tranio is the Jeeves character. He's the helpful servant who comes in and, you know, gets Lucentio out of the soup, as it were.

[B]

Out of the soup, yeah.

[A]

So you see that a lot.

[B]

All right, so this play is. And to anticipate a question, I do not know if Mozart specifically had this play in mind when he composed Don Giovanni, but it likely was one of the several. Several sources of inspiration for him, and it was widely performed. It was never considered Moliere's best play on the whole, but it is. It is one of those that shows him at his best, I think. And Moliere, if. If reading this, you start thinking, this is really different from Tartuffe. Tartuffe is written in verse. This play is written in prose. Moliere.

[A]

What's that?

[B]

Yeah, Moliere wrote in both verse and prose. I think about. Equally. I think about half of his plays are in one or the other prose.

[A]

And I wasn't sure if this was just this particular translation we're working from, the Donnell Frame translation, but it feels very contemporary, the dialogue.

[B]

Yeah, and also rustic. Much of it. I mean, some of the dialogue is between these bumpkins, you know, Pierrot and the. The country girls, Charlotte and Nathalie for dialect and.

[A]

Yeah, he's almost anticipating what's going to happen in the late 1700s.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Romantic movement.

[B]

And if anyone were so inclined to think that in 17th century France, everyone was a bit more polished and sophisticated than we are now. No, they had. They had country bumpkins there as well, and we meet a couple of them as soon as we get off the boat.

[A]

The country bumpkin is a universal figure as well.

[B]

Shall we read this first scene aloud to.

[A]

Sort of.

[B]

So one other thing before we begin. Don Juan, by the time Moliere is writing, he can assume that his audience knows who these characters are, so they don't need any. Yes. And Moliere, it's interesting that a lot of people think that Don Juan is a folk character. He actually was invented by Tirso de Molina.

[A]

Interesting.

[B]

So he begins on the page, which.

[A]

Explains why I felt like it started very in media res. Like it's just.

[B]

Oh, no, we don't really have to explain who these guys are. We just, you know, the audience will know.

[A]

Okay. Interesting. Which is interesting that he's become such an iconic character that we still know exactly who he is. And he doesn't need any introduction.

[B]

Correct? Yeah, yeah.

[A]

We can talk later about how this play is going to influence others. Maybe we'll do that in the second episode.

[B]

So, act one, we have these. These two servants, Skanarel and Don Elvir's footman named Guzman Scanarel, holding a snuff box. Whatever Aristotle and philosophy itself may say, there's nothing like tobacco. It's the passion of all, gentlemen. And he who lives without tobacco is unworthy to live. Not only does it delight and clear the human brain, but also it trains the soul for virtue, and with it one learns how to become a gentleman. Don't you always see as soon as a man takes it how obliging his manner becomes with everyone? And how delighted he is to offer it right and left, wherever he may be. He doesn't even wait to be asked, but anticipates people's wishes. So true it is that tobacco inspires sentiments of honour and virtue in all those who take it. But enough of that. Let's get back to where we were talking about. So then, my dear Guzman, your mistress, Dona Elvir, surprised that our leaving is in full career after us. And her heart, which my master succeeded in touching all too deeply, could not live, you say, without coming to seek him here. Shall I tell you what I think? Between you and me, I'm afraid that she's ill repaid for her love, and her journey to this city will bear little fruit, and that you would have gained just as much by not stirring from home.

[A]

And what's your reason? Tell me, please, Scanarel, what it is that can inspire in you such an ominous fear? Has your master opened his heart to you about it? Has he told you that he felt some coldness toward us that obliged him to leave?

[B]

No, no. But from one look around I know pretty well how things are going. And without his having said anything to me yet, I would almost bet that that's where this affair is heading. I might possibly be wrong, but after all, on such matters experience has given me some light.

[A]

What could this unexpected departure be? An infidelity of Don Juan's? Could he wrong the chaste love of Dona Elvira in this way?

[B]

No, it's just that he's still young and hasn't the courage to man of.

[A]

His quality do such a co. Oh, yes, his quality.

[B]

That's a fine reason. And that's what should put a stop to stop to things.

[A]

But he is bound by the holy ties of marriage.

[B]

Oh, poor old Guzman, My friend, you don't know yet, believe me, what sort of a man Don Juan is.

[A]

Indeed, I don't know what sort of a man he can be, if he has really treated us with such perfidy. And I do not understand how, after showing so much love and so much impatience, so much urgent homage, so many vows, sighs and tears, so many passionate letters, ardent protestations and repeated oaths, in short, so many transports and outbursts as he displayed until, in his passion, he even forced the sacred obstacle of a convent to place Dona Elvira within his power. I do not understand. I say, how, after all that, he could have the heart to go back on his word.

[B]

I don't have much trouble understanding it. And if you knew his character, you'd find the matter pretty easy for him. I don't say that he has changed his feelings about Dona Elvir, but I have no certainty about that. Yet you know that by his orders I left before him, and he hasn't talked with me since he arrived. But let me inform you by way of precaution, internos, that in my master Don Juan, you see the greatest villain that the earth ever bore. A madman, a dog, a devil, a Turk, a heretic who doesn't believe in heaven, hell or werewolf, who spent his time like a real brute beast, one of Epicurus, swine, a regular Sardanapalus who closes his ears to every remonstrance you can make, and treats everything we believe in as nonsense. You tell me he married your mistress? Believe me, he would have done more than that for his passion. And besides her, he would have married you, his dog and his cat as well. Well, a marriage costs him nothing to contract. He uses no other snares to catch beauties, and he's a marrier for all comers. Grown lady, young lady, bourgeois peasant girl. He finds nothing too hot or too cold for him. And if I told you the names of all the women he has married in various places, it would be a chapter to last us until evening. You are surprised, and you change colour at what I say. That's only a mere sketch of the personage. And to complete the portrait would require far broader brush strokes. Enough to say that the wrath of Heaven must crush him some day, that I'd be much better off belonging to the devil than to him, and that he makes me witness so many horrors that I wish he was already. I don't know where. But a great lord who is a wicked man is a terrible thing. I have to be faithful to him in spite of myself. Fear fulfils the function of zeal in me, curbs my feelings and very often reduces me to applauding what my soul detests. Here he comes now to take a walk in this palace. Let's part. But listen, I've confided this to you in frankness, and it came out of my mouth pretty fast. But if any of it had to come to his ears, I would declare boldly that you had lied. All right?

[A]

Yeah. In this scene, he sets up everything.

[B]

So.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So Skanachel is. He's not the loyal unto the death servant here.

[A]

No.

[B]

He's the other kind of servant that you sometimes see in the place who's almost as worldly as his master, sycophantic where he needs to be, and essentially out for himself.

[A]

I think it's really interesting that he starts with the little monologue about tobacco.

[B]

Which, by the way, was, of course, tobacco has become a commodity on the European markets a century and more sense. And it was a little bit disreputable in many quarters enough so that, I mean, this is within probably 40 years, 45 years of King James writing his famous counterblast to tobacco, which he considered to be corrupting, coarsening of the moral character and all of these other bad things and just bad for society as a whole. So being the kind of gentleman who hung around another institution, new to Europe at this time, the coffee shops. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's presenting yourself as a man of the world and not necessarily developing simply through that habit alone, a reputation for vice, but, you know, certainly fashionable worldliness.

[A]

And I liked that. It's basically starting with a conversation about pleasure.

[B]

Right, right. Yeah. And the principal character in this, of course, is, what should we say? A man of the belly.

[A]

Absolutely. I was actually gonna bring up that point. So the fact that he calls him a beast. Right. So if you go back to this Platonic idea of the Tripartites, the swine of Epicurus, that' so we've got the head, the chest and the belly. This is a man who's ruled by his belly. Right. All of his appetites, all of the pleasure that he wants. And so he's a beast, because beasts are also ruled by their appetites.

[B]

And for anyone who isn't aware, Epicurus was an Athenian philosopher of the third century bc and it was his teaching that pleasure, which he defined as the absence of pain and disturbance was the highest good that a philosopher could seek.

[A]

So he's kind of the counterpoint to Stoicism, right?

[B]

Kind of, yeah, very much the counterpoint to Stoicism. They both arise at roughly the same time in history, and they're both. They're both in different ways. Philosophies of resignation, I suppose you could say. But Epicurus and almost all of Epicurus's own writings are lost. He was known much more by reputation than through his own words. Epicurus, in the Middle Ages and afterwards in the Christian centuries, developed a reputation for being a debauched scoundrel. And anyone who. Anyone who professed his philosophy must be a rake, a seducer, a blasphemer, a glutton. All of these things rolled into 1.

[A]

1. And we also find out in this opening scene that this guy plays the long game.

[B]

Oh, yes, he can be. And it mentions that he did not respect the sanctity of a convent. In some versions of this story, and Moliere seems to be alluding to this. Don Juan abducts one of his lovers, whether it's Dona Elvir or others, from. From a convent when she is a novice. And you know, thus forcing her to. Forcing her to violate her vows of chastity. And Byron actually plays with this as well. It's one of my favorite lines in Byron. It's. He's describing Don Juan and his rarefied set of talents. And he says, twas skilled in the arts of riding, fencing, gunnery, and how to scale a fortress or a nunnery.

[A]

I love that line where the. Where Gusman says, but surely, you know, he's not gonna, you know, violate the sanctity of marriage. He goes, marriage. Look, look, if to get what he wanted, he'd marry her. You, his cat, his dog, it doesn't matter. He'll marry anybody.

[B]

So he gets around.

[A]

He gets around. He gets around. But. But it's not just that he's a player and a seducer. He convinces all these women that they are married. Married to him.

[B]

And it's also. It's not just that he's a seducer, but that. I mean, for. For most of the most real life, Don Juan's seduction is kind of a sport and a fun distraction. But for him, it's. He treats it almost like it's like this. Yeah, it's his raison d'. Art. It's his. It's his vocation. Yeah, it's. It's. It's what he does. And as soon as. And also. Exactly. And as soon as he is achieved from a woman, what the French call le, he loses interest in her.

[A]

That's right.

[B]

And then on to the next one. And, you know, the. The more challenging, the better.

[A]

Right?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Right. So he has gotten this woman to violate her holy orders. She is married to him, and he has whatever dalliance he has, and then quickly abandons her for the next thing, and she's chasing him.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

This is scene two. So Don Juan comes in and now is going to find out.

[B]

By the way, I think we talked about this when we went through Tartuffe. But in Moliere, scene changes work a bit differently than they do in, say, Elizabethan drama. There's a scene change wherever a new character appears on stage, even if there is not a change in scenery or a curtain drop. So scene two, Don Juan comes on. On.

[A]

So Don Juan comes in and he and his servant have a conversation. And Don Juan says why it is that he's abandoned Donna Elvira? Because there's a new woman.

[B]

As there always is.

[A]

As there always is. I love when. When Cinderella says, your heart is the greatest lady chaser in the world. It loves to ramble from bond to bond and doesn't much like to stay put and. Actually, you could read this. You should read this.

[B]

Okay, Certainly.

[A]

Monologue. But what were you gonna say?

[B]

Oh, hey, so let me read this first. So, Don Juan, what do you want us to bind ourselves for good to the first object that captivates us, Give up the world for her and have no more eyes for anyone else? That's a fine thing to want to pride ourselves on some false honor of fidelity. To bury ourselves forever in one passion and to be dead from our youth on to all the other beauties that may strike our eyes. No, no. Constancy is good only for nincompoops. Every beautiful woman has the right to charm us. And the advantage of having been the first one we met, and the advantage of having been the first one we met must not rob the others of the just claims they have on our hearts. So he's a man of principle. Blasted it. As for me, beauty entrances me wherever I find it, and I easily yield to the sweet violence with which it sweeps us along. It may be bound. I may be bound. But the love I have for one beautiful woman does not bind my soul to do injustice to the others. I still have eyes to see the merit of them all, and I pay to each one the homage and tribute that nature requires of us. Whatever my situation, I cannot refuse my heart to anyone. I see to be lovable. And as soon as a fair face asks me for it, if I had 10,000 hearts, I'd give them all. After all, budding inclinations have unaccountable charms. And the whole pleasure of love lies in change. We savour an infinite sweetness in overcoming a young beauty's heart by a thousand acts of homage, in seeing day by day the little steps by which we progress, in combating by our transports, tears and sighs, the innocent, innocent modesty of a soul loath to surrender its arms, enforcing step by step, the little obstacles with which she resists in conquering the scruples in which she takes honour, and bringing her gently to the point where we want to bring her. But once we are the master, there is nothing more to say and nothing more to wish for. All the beauty of the passion is finished. And in the tranquillity of such a love we fall asleep. Sleep. Unless some new object comes to awaken our desires and offer our heart the alluring charms of a conquest to be made. In short, there's nothing so sweet as to triumph over the resistance of a beauty. And in this matter I have the ambition of the conquerors who perpetually fly from victory to victory and cannot bring themselves to limit their aspirations. There is nothing that can arrest the. The impetuosity of my desires. I feel a heart in me fit to love the whole world. And, like Alexander, I could wish there were other worlds so that I might extend my amorous conquests there.

[A]

I thought that was hilarious.

[B]

Oh, yes. And, of course, readers of Plutarch will recognize the allusion to Alexander, who wept when he saw there were no more worlds to conquer.

[A]

So when his wife shows up and says, why are you leaving me? And he's like, signorilla, tell me. Him. Tell him. Oh, sir, I. Well, Alexander, we had to leave because of. That was so great.

[B]

No, but I mean, it shows that Don Juan, like it's. It isn't strictly necessary for the purpose of the play to make him into a hypocrite, but Moliere does, with wonderful success, I think. And he. He kind of sees himself as a great man and. And almost like he's standing up for some kind of ideal. And he might half believe himself right here. Yeah. Anyway, I found that that was an interesting dramatic contrivance, which, as I said, it isn't strictly necessary to the play, but it does add something to it.

[A]

It does add something to it.

[B]

This guy, who's really kind of a sleazy rake, sees himself as like the Alexander of humanity.

[A]

Don't the player hate the game?

[B]

Sure.

[A]

Right. Y. No, he doesn't see, I think, poorly of himself. And something else that's interesting to me about the Scaranel character is. Oh, thank you. Thank you, Scanarel. He pushes back a lot on Don Juan. He pushes back as much as he can.

[B]

Yeah. It's. Honestly, it's kind of like their. Their dynamic. The two characters is a little bit like that of. Of a different Spanish knight and his valet, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Because Sancho Panza is. I mean, his name means Sancho Belly or Sancho Ponch. He wants to know where his next meal is coming from. And, you know, if you've read Don Quixote, you know this. He wants a good bed for the night and, you know, a good jug of wine and doesn't really care about all this idealistic, heroic, tilting at windmill stuff. And Skanel plays the same kind of. Of, you know, it's. It's. It's the lower side of humanity that doesn't pretend to be more than it is, perhaps. Whereas Don Juan is kind of a victim of his own twisted, for lack of a better word, idealism.

[A]

Well, I was thinking in particular of this little scene where. Where he's saying, if I had a hypothetical master, I might tell him what a horrible person was that other guy. Not. Not you, that other guy. And I would just tell him, you're a dirty dog and you shouldn't be doing this. That other guy, not you. I thought that was all.

[B]

Oh, yeah, like the banter. Banter Moliere does really well.

[A]

The banter is fantastic. And when you get into Act 2, the banter there with the country bumpkins is fantastic.

[B]

Oh, and I wanted to read like this, this little bit on page 340, where Don Juan and Skane are going at it here. So Don Juan says, well, you may.

[A]

But, sir, would it be within the permission you have given me if I told you that I'm just a bit scandalized at the life you le.

[B]

How's that? What kind of life do I lead?

[A]

A very good one. But for example, to see you getting married every month the way you do.

[B]

Is there anything pleasanter?

[A]

That's true, that's true. I suppose it is very pleasant and very diverting, and I'd like it well enough myself if there weren't any harm in it. But, sir, to make sport of a holy sacrament that way.

[B]

And calm, calm, that's a matter between Heaven, Heaven and me. And we'll settle it Together well enough without your worrying about it.

[A]

My word, sir. I've always heard that to mock heaven is a wicked mockery and that libertines never come to a good end.

[B]

Hold it, master fool. You know I've told you that I don't like expostulators.

[A]

I know, and I'm not speaking to you. God forbid. Now you know what you're doing. And if you don't believe in anything, you have your reasons. But there are some impertinent little people in the world who are libertines without knowing why, who set up as free thinkers because they think it's becoming to them. And if I had a master like that, I would look him in the face and say to him very plainly, do you really dare to set yourself up against heaven in this way? And doesn't it make you tremble to make fun of the holiest things as you do? Is it really for you, little earthworm, little anthem I'm speaking to the master I mentioned. Is it really for you to want to make a joke of what everyone revered? Do you think that because you're a gentleman and wear a well curled blonde wig, feathers in your hat, a coat well trimmed with gold lace and flame colored ribbons. I'm talking not to you, you know, but to the other one. Do you think I say that you're an abler man for all that? That you're free to do anything you like and that no one will dare to tell you the truth about yourself? Take it from me, though I'm your servant, that sooner or later heaven punishes the empire, that an evil life brings on an evil death, and that.

[B]

Enough.

[A]

You have some business?

[B]

My business is to tell you that I have my heart set on a certain beauty. And that led by her charms I have followed her all the way to this town.

[A]

And have you nothing to fear, sir? Here, from the death of that commander you killed six months ago.

[B]

Okay. And here also. This is a. What would be a familiar part of this story to the audience of the day? A part of the Don Juan legend is that he had seduced the young daughter of a Spanish nobleman. And this Spanish nobleman challenged him as a debt of honor to a duel. And Don Juan killed him. Okay, so he's back in the town of the commander whom he killed. And again, if you know Mozart's opera, the Commendatore and all that.

[A]

So, so, and then Don Juan tells him what new thing has caught his eye. So why don't you read that bottom of 341.

[B]

Oh, let's not go thinking about the harm that may happen to us. And let's think only about what one what can give us pleasure. The person I'm telling you about is a young engaged girl, lovely as can be, who was brought here by the very man she is coming to marry. And it was by chance that I saw this couple of sweethearts three or four days before the trip. Trip. Never have I seen two people so happy with each other. In displaying more love, the visible tenderness of their mutual passion stirred me. I was struck to the heart by it. And my love began in jealousy. Yes. From the first, I couldn't bear seeing them so happy together. Vexation alerted my desires. And I imagined an extreme pleasure in being able to disturb their understanding and break this attachment at which the delicacy of my heart. Heart considered itself offended. But up to now, all my efforts have been useless. And I am having recourse to the final remedy today. This would be husband is to treat his mistress to a boat ride on the sea without my telling you anything about it. Everything is prepared for me to satisfy my love. And I have some men in a small boat with which I expect to carry off my beauty very easily.

[A]

All right. So he saw a happy couple and he's so jealous, he decides sides. I'm gonna break them up. I'm gonna. I'm in today. I. Since my other attempts have not had success. I'm gonna go out there today while they're on a boating trip. And I'm gonna take her.

[B]

And even though this is. This is a obviously comic and even farcical play. Did it remind you a little bit of Satan spying on Adam and Eve in the garden?

[A]

I was totally thinking.

[B]

And again, I'm not comparing small things with. With grand. But it's. It's kind of interesting because these are.

[A]

Written motivated by jealousy.

[B]

Paradise Lost is probably two or three years published of this 1660s. Yeah.

[A]

Well, yeah. And he's always got two. Does two editions.

[B]

Right.

[A]

He comes out later with the chapters. But no, I thought the same thing. This kind of like. I don't really want this woman.

[B]

For all of his protestations that I'm just. I just enjoy beauty too much. And it would be a sin to deny pleasure to all these women. And. And I wouldn't be appreciating them. Injustice to their beauty. I mean, there's. There's really something.

[A]

And immediately you see this other side.

[B]

Yeah. This kind of petty envy because he's.

[A]

Not saying anything about pleasure. I just don't want these people to Be happy. Okay, so hear me out here. As soon as I read that, I pulled out my copy of the Fairy Queen. That's why you see it next to me. Because in Fairy Queen, book one, canto four, there's a. A. A pageant of the seven deadly sins.

[B]

I remember. Yeah.

[A]

And so a pageant is just these like very highly symbolic characters come out and they represent different things allegorically. And so there's one that represents lust and lechery in particular, which is such a great word. We should bring back the word lechery.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Instead of saying he's a player, he's a lecher. But I want to read the description, the symbolic description of lechery here because. Because it's Don Juan. It's just exactly what I described.

[B]

I wouldn't have made this connection, honestly.

[A]

So let's see what you think about this. All right, so next. Rode lustful lechery upon a bearded goat. Of course. Lecheries on a goat. Right.

[B]

They are proverbially lecherous.

[A]

That's right, you old gulch. Right. So he's riding upon a bearded goat whose rugged hair and w e eyes the sign of jealousy. Okay. Boom. Right out the gate. Right? Right. Lechery has a jealous eyes. Was like the person's self whom he did bear, who rough and black and filthy did appear unseemly man to please fair lady eyes. Yet he of ladies off was loved dear when fairer faces were bid standing by. Oh, who knows the bent of women's fantasy. I gotta pause there because that part always cracks me up that the men are like, what do women even seeing him? There's better looking men all around. Why does this like not even attractive guy getting all the women? And like Spencer, you, you, you see us all in a green gown. He clothed was full fair, which underneath did hide his filthiness. Right. So it looks good on the outside, but he's filthy on the inside. And in his hand. So in a. In a pageant, all of the kind of items in their hands and that they're holding are all very symbolic things. So in his hand he has a burning heart. Heart. Of course he does. Right. He's legary a burning heart he bear full of feign follies and newfangledness. By the way, Edmund Spitzer invented the word newfangledness right here.

[B]

No kidding?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

Isn't that cool? For he was false and fraught with fickleness and learned had to love with secret looks and well could dance and sing with ruefulness. And fortunes tell and read in loving books and thousand other ways to bait his fleshly hooks. Okay, now here's the. Here's the money shot for Don Juan. Inconstant man that loved all he saw and lusted after all that he did love?

[B]

Ah, there's the rub.

[A]

Yep. No. Would he looser life be tied to law, but joyed weak women's hearts to temp and prove if from their loyal loves he might them move? You got that? He likes to break up happy couples just to see if he can woo the woman away from the man she loves, which lewdness filled him with reproachful pain. Of that file evil, which all men reprove, that rots the marrow and consumes the brain. Such one was lechery, the third of all his train. That's He. He has syphilis. That's. That's the description there. Because the lech has. Has Sl. Anyway, right? Lechery enjoys. He's inconstant. He's in love with every woman. And he enjoys breaking couples up just to see if he can. So Don Juan is the picture of lechery from the Fairy Queen.

[B]

That's amazing. That's very good.

[A]

Thought she'd like that. All right. So then that brings us to scene three, when his wife shows up.

[B]

All right, so Dona Alvir arrives in a passion.

[A]

Here, do you want me to pick this up, please? I get to be the woman.

[B]

I think that's about right.

[A]

Will you do me the kindness, Don Juan, to be willing to recognize me? And may I at least hope that you will deign to turn your face this way?

[B]

I think you need to aspirate the h. A little. The j. A little bit more. Again. Method act this, Ms. Stanford. Method act this. Of course, Don Juan.

[A]

Will you do me the kindness, Don Juan, to be willing to recognize me? And may I at least hope that you will deign to turn your face this way?

[B]

Madam, I confess I am surprised, and I wasn't expecting you here.

[A]

Yes, I can see very well that you weren't expecting me here. And you are surprised indeed, but quite otherwise than I hoped. And the way you show it convinces me fully of what I was refusing to believe. I marvel at my simplicity and weak heartedness in doubting a betrayal with so much evidence confirmed. I was fond enough, I confess, or rather stupid enough, to try to deceive myself, to struggle to give the lie to my eyes in judgment. I sought reasons to excuse to my heart the weakened affection it observed in you, and I deliberately made up to myself a hundred Legitimate reasons for such a precipitate departure to justify you for a crime of which my reason accused you. My just suspicions spoke to me each day in vain. I rejected their voice which would have made you criminal in my eyes. Eyes. And listened with pleasure to a thousand ridiculous fancies which represented you to my heart as innocent. Now, at last, this reception leaves me no room for doubt. And your look when you first saw me tells me far more things than I could wish to know. However, I should like very much to hear from your own lips the reasons why you left. Speak, Don Juan, I pray you, and let's see with what countenance you will justify yourself.

[B]

Madame, here is scanner. Hell. Who knows why I left? Scanarel says aye, sir, if you please. I don't know anything about it.

[A]

Well, Scanner El. Speak. It doesn't matter from whose lips I hear the reason.

[B]

Come on then, speak to Madame. What do you. What do you want me to say?

[A]

Come here, since it is so willed. And tell me something about the reasons for such a sudden departure.

[B]

Aren't you going to answer? I have nothing to answer. You're making sport of your servant. Will you answer? I tell you Madame. What, sir, if. Madame, the reasons for our departure are conquerors, Alexander and other worlds. There, sir, that's all I can say.

[A]

Will you be kind enough, Dart Walm, to enlighten us about these fine mysteries?

[B]

Madam, to tell you the truth.

[A]

Oh, how poorly you know how to defend yourself for a courtier who must be accustomed to this sort of thing. I pity you, to see the confusion you're in. Why don't you arm your brow with noble effrontery? Why don't you swear to me that you still have the same feelings for me, that you still love me with unequaled ardor, and that nothing but death is capable of tearing you from me? Why don't you tell me that business of the utmost importance forced you to leave without letting me know? That in spite of yourself, you have to remain here for some time, and that I have only to go back to where I came from, assured that you will follow in my footsteps as soon as you possibly can. That it is certain that you burn to be with me again, and that apart from me you suffer what a body suffer separated from from its soul. That's how you should defend yourself, and not just be speechless as you are.

[B]

I admit, madam, that I do not have the talent to dissimulate, and that I have a sincere heart. I will not tell you that I still have the same feelings for you, and that I burn to be with you again, since, after all, it is established that I left only to flee you, not for the reasons that you may imagine, but from a purely conscientious motive, and because I did not believe, believe that I could live with you any longer without sin. Scruples came to me, madam, and I opened the eyes of my soul upon what I was doing. I reflected that in order to marry you I stole you from the enclosure of a convent, that you broke vows that bound you elsewhere, and that Heaven is very jealous of this kind of thing. Repentance seized me, and I dreaded the divine wrath. I came to believe that our marriage was nothing but disguise adultery, that it would bring upon us some retribution from on high, and that, in short, I should strive to forget you and give you a way to go back to your first bonds. Madam, would you oppose so pious a thought? And would you have me go bringing heaven down upon me by you, villain.

[A]

Now I know you through and through, and to my misfortune I know you when it is too late, in which such knowledge can no longer help me, except to drive me to despair. But know that your crime shall not remain unpunished, and that the same heaven you mock will be able to avenge me for your perfidy.

[B]

Scanarel Heaven. Yes, indeed. A lot we care about that we do, madam.

[A]

That's enough. I don't want to hear any more. And I even blame myself for having heard too much. Much. It's despicable to have one's shame explained too clearly. And on such subjects a noble heart should choose its course at once. Don't expect me to break out here in reproaches and insults. No, no. My wrath is not one to spend itself in empty words, and its full heat is reserved for its vengeance. I tell you once more, Heaven will punish you, traitor, for the wrong you are doing me. And if Heaven has nothing you can fear, fear at least the anger of an outraged woman.

[B]

If only remorse could seize him then. Don Juan. After a moment's reflection. All right, let's think about carrying out our amorous enterprise. Yeah, it's like, didn't bother him that much, really. But no, I mean, he's a wonderfully entertaining character to watch. Even if all the time you're rooting for him to get his comeuppance.

[A]

I think we still have time, that we could start Act Two. Let's at least start Act Two. Okay, so now we've changed. We're by the seashore, and you've got Your country bumpkins. And there's been a shipwreck. And this guy Pirro has rescued Don Juan and Scarlet. Very Shakespeare, Roman new comer.

[B]

You know, actually David Copperfield also, if you remember. And I have no idea, I have no idea if Dickens knew this play or not, but if you remember, in David Copperfield. Oh. Little Emily runs off with James Steerforth.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And their boat is. Or Steerforth's boat is wrecked on the coast. And who is little Emily's intended? Is it Ham or something like that?

[A]

Yes.

[B]

He rescues or tries to rescue Steerforth, but I think Steerforth is drowned. It's oddly similar. Similar. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. I was thinking more generally, like, how many Shakespeare plays are moved forward by a shipwreck?

[B]

Yeah. The tempest and 12th, our comedy of errors even. Yeah, it's Twelfth Night, right?

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

There's so many. Yeah, there's so many. But yes. Okay. So he's gonna rescue a guy who comes ashore and tries to seduce his girl. It's successfully.

[B]

And our two young lovers here are two country lovers. All is not well between them. This is a sort of tempestuous relationship.

[A]

And this scene was hilarious.

[B]

Oh, it is hilarious. Yeah. Yeah. And Pyrrho is. He's the kind of lovable country bumpkin who talks a little bit big.

[A]

He's talked so much. So she's like, what happened? And he goes into this long story about. I was with my friend. Yeah.

[B]

He's always a little bit roundabout about.

[A]

You did see that. So we made a bet, like, just on and on.

[B]

Yeah. He never says something by the most direct route.

[A]

Like a character in Andy Griffith.

[B]

Yeah. Like. Or he could be one of Shakespeare's clowns as well. Like, like, you know, since he, since he brought it up.

[A]

Yes. So, so he tells this long story and then he says. And she's like, and then you rescued him. He's like, yeah, I rescued him. And, and they took his clothes off. And she's like, they're naked. And then he has this hilarious description of watching.

[B]

Like they have they're hair. That ain't their hair. And yeah, no, no, I, I, I.

[A]

Love, I love this whole thing. She's like, is he still at your house naked? He says, oh, no, not him. They got him dressed again right in front of us. By gum, I never had seen one of them being dressed. What a lot of contraptions and do hickey those courtiers fellas do put on themselves. I get lost in all of that. I would. And I have my jaw hanging down watching it. Look, Charlotte, they Got hair that don't stay on their head, hands. And they slap that on after all the rest like some big flags bought it. We got shirts, they got sleeves. We could get inside of you and me just the way we are. Instead of bridges, they got them a great big apron as well. That is from here to Easter. Instead of a doublet little waistcoat that'll even come down to their solar plexus. Instead of neck pants, a great big less neckerchief with four big linen tassels that hangs down over their snow stomach. Then they got other little neck bands at the end of their arms, like. And then they got great funnels of lace on their legs. And on top of all that, such a lot of ribbons. Such a lot of ribbons. Really makes you sorry for them. Why, they even got the shoes that ain't all loaded with them right from one end to the other. And the way they're fixed up, I'd be sure as heck break my neck.

[B]

Can I admit that while I was reading this, this section of the play, I was picturing Charlotte as Dolly Parton. I don't even know why, but yeah, yeah, I was getting Dolly Parton vibes off of her.

[A]

Okay, so after all of that, then he's like, no, no, no, listen, I need to talk to you. This is the reason, right? I don't think you love me. Right?

[B]

Exactly. Yeah. So all is not well in this, this, you know, idyllic little shepherd's landscape.

[A]

Why he thinks that she doesn't love him because she doesn't play tricks on it him and tease him and give him a hard time. And she's like, but I loving you the best I can. He's like, you got to do better. You know, that girl, like, she. She's never gives that guy a rest. He's always giving him a hard time. You need to give me a hard time.

[B]

Like they do in a play.

[A]

Like they do in a play. Oh, very good. Very good. And I did think it was kind of structurally interesting, right? So you have. You have Don Juan's wife saying, you don't love me the way you should. And then you have. Have this guy telling his girl, you don't love me the way you should. And it's very comical. So he wants little love tricks played on him. He wants to feel like he's in a drama, right?

[B]

Well, he's about to get a little bit more than he bargained for, Don Juan.

[A]

So he washes up and he sees.

[B]

Not one, but two. So we have Charlotte and Matohini so first he tells.

[A]

Tells Scandal that, oh, man, I can't believe my. My plan has gone awry and I didn't get that girl. And, oh, I'm so mad. But, you know, this girl right here, she makes up for it.

[B]

Yeah, why not?

[A]

Why not? She's here, I'm here, We're bored. There's nothing better to do. And so apparently before we. We meet this scene, because we find that out in the next scene, he's promised to marry this girl and then immediately walks into town and starts hitting on Charlotte.

[B]

Yeah, why not?

[A]

And. And she's. To her credit is like, sir, I. I've heard about men like you. I've heard there are men who come in and tell women all kind of things like that. And he's like, yeah, those guys are terrible, but I'm totally not like that.

[B]

And Moliere is one of many. And this goes back also to Roman comedy, that one of the chief tricks in your bag is to have all the characters be a little bit stupider than they would be in real life, because Don Juan is obviously a wolf on the prowl here. But everyone. Everyone else, with the exception of maybe Scana and Don. Don Elir, albeit too late, is just taken in by him.

[A]

Well, he's very handsome.

[B]

Well, he's very handsome.

[A]

And rich.

[B]

And rich.

[A]

I love how as soon as he. He does that, Scanarel turns to the audience and says, here we go again. So, yeah, Charlotte's not the brightest bulb here. Here. She. She says, no, I'm really gonna marry you. Let's shake hands. And then he says, and kiss me. And she's like, nope, nope, not. Tell her, Mary. And he says, okay, I'll wait. And then Pirro comes back and says, get your hands off our women. Go home and touch your own women like, I just rescued you. What are you doing? He's like, excuse me, sir. This is my fiance now.

[B]

And Pierrot, even though, I mean, this is giving just act two, scene four, but. Or actually scene three, even though he talks big and he has kind of the, you know, big boned country. Country loutish thing going on for him, he's not actually that brave. He's hiding behind. He's hiding behind her. When it comes to actually challenging, Don.

[A]

Juan just slaps him.

[B]

Yeah. And Pierrot can't really do anything about it, except, hey, you slapped me.

[A]

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So she's like, don't get. This was really funny. Don't get mad. He's gonna marry me. And then will. Will buy Our butter and eg you like, you're going to be set up. So sweet. And he's like, I wouldn't sell any of it to you.

[B]

And then briefly in scene four, where. And this scene. It would take really good actors, I think, to make this scene not goofy.

[A]

Right, Right.

[B]

Where there's the two girls and they're arguing over which of them is engaged to him. And he's talking to one. He's. It's. He's speaking in asides to them so that the one can't hear what he's saying to the other. Other reading.

[A]

It was awkward, but I did find some scenes on YouTube and that was a lot.

[B]

Yeah, you can look up performances of this play and see how.

[A]

How it was. And so he's. They're basically fighting over him. I'm his fiance. No, I'm his fiance. And he is able to convince both of them that they are their fiances and the other girls. Crazy.

[B]

Exactly. Yeah.

[A]

And so then the girls logically turn to him and say, say it out loud. Which one of us? And he's like, like, what a ridiculous thing. Like. Like, my true love knows she's my true love. And why do I have to say anything? And why not? Just what's the harm in letting someone else think something, you know, what's true? It's like those Oscar, you know, speeches of. I'd like to thank these people, you know, who you are.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Just to be clear, if you're ever wanting to thank me at the Oscars, I do not know who I am. You must say my name. I wouldn't let you get away with this, Mr. Banks.

[B]

Yeah, right.

[A]

You have to publicly declare me as your wife.

[B]

Of course. Of course. If I overlooked that, I think it would be the last award show I ever went to.

[A]

So. Yeah. Okay, so we end this Act 2. I mean, it'll be Act 3 before we get to the climax, but I mean, this guy's just causing trouble everywhere he goes.

[B]

Yeah. It almost seems that the creating disruptions and. And creating moral disruptions and anarchy is more pleasurable to him than the actual physical enjoyment of a woman.

[A]

Oh, very much.

[B]

Even though that's what. He's famous. Yeah.

[A]

He likes the game.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And it's interesting, when he. When he walks off, Scanarel immediately tells the girls, don't believe a word he's saying. Get out of here. Go back to your villages. Be safe. My. You know, my. My master is a slanderer and a liar. The dawn walks back in and he goes and he's not a slander and not a liar, and anybody who says that about him is wrong. And Don Juan's like, what are you doing? He's like, I'm making sure these girls know not to believe any rumors about you or slanders, because you're the real deal.

[B]

You're a good guy, you know, in one of W.H. auden's literary essays, he's talking about the history of romantic love, and he. He's speaking about the Don Juan character as a particular kind of archetype, and in romantic fiction or comedy, sometimes tragedy. And he says that it's not really the love of pleasure that drives him so much as the fear of not keeping his reputation as a seducer in fine trim. Oh, I haven't enjoyed. You know, I haven't enjoyed a woman in five days. What would my friends think of me if they knew this? So I have to go find. Find a willing female in that instance.

[A]

It's very much like a knight errant, kind of, who has to constantly find new adventures.

[B]

The photo negative of a knight errant, yes, but who's rootless and can never stay in one place and always must.

[A]

Be on the look for things that will bring him honor and is always constantly told to live up to his fame, his reputation.

[B]

Very good. That's very good.

[A]

So it's probably like a parody. Night errant.

[B]

I thought I was gonna say the smart things for this episode. How dare you?

[A]

You. You set me up. You put the ball on the team.

[B]

Well, I think that's a pretty good note to end on.

[A]

I think it is. I think it is. So next time we will get Acts 3, 4, and 5, so the second half of the play, and then we'll talk about the way in which Don Juan is not only a stock character, but becomes, through Moliere's presentation, even more of a archetype and will influence others, like Lord Byron.

[B]

We talk about Byron next time. Yeah, because Byron, one of his major poems, is a. A. Also a farcical. Actually, it's it. If you think that Byron is always brooding in morose, he can be very devastatingly funny.

[A]

We should probably define a farce.

[B]

Yeah, we should. We'll get to that.

[A]

We'll do that next week. All right. Well, I hope you guys enjoyed the podcast. We're having a good time. Come back next week when we finish this. Stick around to the end. Mr. Banks has a special poem. Thanks and shout out to our Patreon. And if you want to join the conversation there, you can go to patreon.com literarylife and head over to houseofhumaneletters.com to sign up for Ella's webinar or to purchase our conference or to peruse our courses coming up. You can also sign up for the newsletter so you don't miss any important announcements and you can get the podcast schedule. And the reading challenge for 2026 is over on the Patreon as well. So thanks so much for listening. And until next time, guys, keep crafting your literary life because stories will save the. Thank you for listening to the Literary Life Podcast brought to you by our loyal patreon sponsors. Visit HouseOfHumaneLetters.com to find Angelina and Thomas and to sign up for our newsletter with podcast schedules and more. And keep up with [e-mail] Join the Conversation at our member Only Patreon Forum or our Facebook discussion group. Visit patreon.com theliterarylife to find out how you can sponsor this podcast and get great bonus content. Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review and check out our sister podcasts, the New Mason Jar and the well Read Poem. And now for a poem read by poets. Thomas Banks.

[B]

Song to a Fair Young Lady Going out of Town in the Spring by John Dryden Ask not the cause why sullen spring so long delays her flowers to bear? Why warbling birds forget to sing, and winter storms invert the year Chloris is gone, and fate provides to make it spring where she resides Sides Chlorois is gone the cruel fair she cast not back a pitying eye, but left her lover in despair to sigh, to languish and to die. Ah, how can those fair eyes endure to give the wounds they will not cure? Great God of love, why hast thou made a face that can all hearts command, that all religions can invade and change the laws of every land? Where thou hadst placed such power before, Thou couldst have made her mercy more. When Chloris to the temple comes adoring crowds before her fall she can restore the dead from tombs and every life but mine. Recall I only am by love designed to be the victim for mankind.