Episode 316: "Don Juan" by Moliere, Acts 2-5

Summary

The Literary Life Podcast

Episode 316: "Don Juan" by Molière, Acts 2-5

Date: February 17, 2026
Host: Angelina Stanford
Guests: Thomas Banks
Main Theme:
A lively, insightful exploration of the final acts of Molière’s "Don Juan", focusing on its comedic form, Enlightenment skepticism, archetypal characters, morality, and the play’s comic legacy in literature. Angelina and Thomas perform scenes, dissect farce, and connect Don Juan to wider literary and cultural traditions, all with their characteristically spirited banter.

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks complete their slow read of Molière’s Don Juan by diving into Acts 2-5. They discuss the play’s farcical style, the tension between sacred and profane worldviews, Don Juan as an archetype of the Enlightenment skeptic and serial seducer, and how Molière uses comedy to both lampoon and dialogue with weighty themes. The hosts perform extended readings, unpack literary context, and connect Don Juan to the likes of Byron, Swift, and even Seinfeld.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. European Literary Crosscurrents (02:09–05:16)

• Interconnected Traditions: The hosts open by highlighting how French, English, and Spanish literary cultures influenced one another, citing Shakespeare’s borrowings from Cervantes and Boccaccio, and links between Chaucer, Petrarch, and Froissart.
  • Angelina: "I like being reminded that European and English literature was a lot more aware of each other and influenced by each other than we might…" (02:57)
• Modern Globalization vs. Provincialism: Angelina notes today's paradox: "The more we have tried to become deliberately global, the more provincial we have become in so many ways." (05:07)

2. The Genre of Farce (19:15–21:36)

• Defining Farce:
  • Thomas: "Farce is a fairly unsophisticated form of knockabout, sort of rollicking knockabout comedy... The plot will serve as just kind of a platform for jokes." (19:15)
  • Angelina: Farce is not merely "comedy," but "intentionally being put on to get a laugh. That was farce." (19:57)
• Classic Examples: Three Stooges, Punch and Judy, Looney Tunes, and Taming of the Shrew.
• Comedy vs. Tragedy: The difference between ha-ha funny and "comedy" as a literary structure (e.g., "The Divine Comedy").

3. Performance and Characterization (09:57–11:56)

• Episode is peppered with the hosts’ readings, e.g., Thomas quoting from Byron’s Don Juan, and Angelina sharing a literary roast of Tolkien (15:39), both offering character sketches with humor and affection for literary history.

4. Medicine, Satire, and Swiftian Parallels (22:09–26:19)

• Doctors as Comic Targets:
  • Molière’s mockery of the profession is compared to Jonathan Swift’s satirical take on medicine in Gulliver’s Travels.
  • Thomas: "[Molière] wrote another play called ‘Le Medecin Malgré Lui’ [‘The Doctor In Spite of Himself’]... people start coming to him for medical advice, and he has to pretend to know what he's talking about." (22:12)
• Arsenic and Austen: Angelina shares the "dark" history of medicine and the possibility of Jane Austen dying from prescribed arsenic (25:01).

5. Enlightenment Skepticism vs. Sacred Worldviews (30:34–35:38)

• Don Juan as the Modern Skeptic:
  • Angelina: "Don Juan has that right... People are starting to question things... do we live in a world of facts and natural laws?" (31:45–34:39)
  • Don Juan reduces belief to arithmetic ("I believe that 2 and 2 make 4..."), while Sganarelle counters with a commonsense argument for the sacred structure of the world (32:06).
• Satirizing Materialism: The play lampoons Enlightenment materialism, but not via heavy-handed polemic—the comic structure always wins out.

6. Don Juan’s Character: Appetite, Seduction, and Moral Blindness (38:07–44:02)

• Perpetual Escapism: All consequences (creditors, ruined women, family, death) chase Don Juan, but he believes he can "charm his way out of anything" (38:48, 44:02).
• The Serial Seducer: Both hosts unpack how Don Juan's "marriages" are less legal bigamy than performances of abandonment, making him worse than a simple rake—he ruins women by promising sacraments and then vanishing (42:30–42:56).

7. Supernatural (and Comic) Retribution (44:18–47:13, 67:42–77:06)

• The Statue Scene: Don Juan mockingly invites the statue of the murdered Commander to dinner; the statue accepts, leading to a series of supernatural warnings.
  • The hosts perform this scene energetically, highlighting the farce and underlying tension (44:18–46:08).
• Rule of Three Warnings: The fairy-tale motif—statue, father, and Donna Elvira each warn Don Juan, but he scorns all admonitions (67:42–67:47).
• Final Justice:
  • Angelina: "He's been following his burning passions this whole time, and now he's burned up by those same passions at the end." (76:52)
  • Sganarelle gets the final comic word: "Oh, my wages, my wages. There. Everybody is satisfied by his death... I, who after so many years of service, have no compensation but to see my master's impiety punished before my eyes by the most frightful chastisement in the world. My wages, my wages, my wages." (77:29)

8. Form & Technique: Sticomythia, Banter & Screwball Comedy (57:06–59:07)

• The hosts note Molière’s rapid-fire, witty exchanges ("stickomythia") and compare the pacing to screwball comedy (58:45).

9. Don Juan’s Literary Legacy (80:54–86:16)

• Byron’s Don Juan:
  • Thomas explains Byron’s long comic poem as a satirical, picaresque retelling, focusing not on the master seducer but a man overwhelmed by passion. (80:54–82:55)
  • Byron uses the archetype to lampoon European society, institutions, and even fellow poets.
• The Enduring Archetype:
  • Angelina: "The character really does transcend Molière and even Byron... We still call people, 'Oh, he thinks he’s such a Don Juan.'" (86:00–86:11)
• Cultural Parodies: Contemporary themes connect Don Juan to figures in literature and film (e.g., Seinfeld, Don Juan DeMarco).

10. Comedy’s Value (78:42–80:43)

• Underappreciated Genius of Comedy:
  • Angelina: "We tend to think the tragic view of life is the more realistic one and light-hearted things... not as serious. But it is way easier to make people cry than to make them laugh." (78:42–79:27)
  • P.G. Wodehouse, master of English comic prose, is praised as unmatched in the century (79:31–80:43).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Molière’s Style:
  • "Molière sparkles as a comic writer... He does have a winsome lightness that never deserts him." —Thomas Banks (59:00)
• Don Juan as Modern Man:
  • “I believe that 2 and 2 makes 4, Sganarelle, and that 4 and 4 makes 8.” —Don Juan [dramatic reading, ~30:53]
• Comic Medicine Satire:
  • "It's signaled to me, I tell you. That's the absolute truth. Go on and talk to him yourself and see. Maybe." —Sganarelle [re: speaking statue, 45:49]
• Audience’s Two Minds:
  • “I guess I want you guys to keep two things in your mind at the same time, because we talk a whole lot in here…you can see those allegorical archetypes underneath…that’s how the medievals read. That’s still here. But…they can even make a joke of it and still see it’s all started play.” —Angelina (35:38)
• Archetypes in Comedy:
  • “Don Juan also has money problems…Women problems and money problems tend to go together in literature so very often.” —Thomas (52:15)
• Communal Satiety at Don Juan’s End:
  • "There, everybody is satisfied by his death—offended heaven, violated laws, seduced girls, dishonored families..." —Sganarelle (77:29)
• Farce and Fast-Paced Repartee:
  • "This is very staged, but it's a lot of fun to watch when it's well done." —Angelina (58:45)
• On the Lasting Impact:
  • “The character really does transcend Molière and even Byron because…the word Don Juan becomes synonymous with a seducer.” —Angelina (86:00)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Interconnectivity in Literary History: 02:09–05:16
• Defining Farce & Comic Structure: 19:15–21:36
• Medicine Satire Scenes: 22:09–25:35
• Don Juan’s Materialism & Sganarelle’s Counter: 30:34–34:39
• The Statue and Supernatural Warnings: 44:18–47:13, 67:42–69:45
• Performing Don Juan’s creditor scene: 54:26–57:07
• Sticomythia & Comedy Technique: 57:14–59:07
• Morality and Nobility Theme: 61:14–63:49
• Don Juan’s End—Death & Final Justice: 75:00–77:44
• Comedy's Worth vs. Tragedy: 78:42–80:43
• Byron’s Don Juan & Later Legacy: 80:54–86:16

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Tone & Atmosphere

Engaging, witty, intellectually rich, and conversational. The hosts deliver playful banter, character voices, and asides while always steering discussions back to the big questions about literature’s purpose, archetypes, morality, and comedy’s surprising profundity.

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Further Reading & Next Episodes

• Upcoming: Literary Life of Charlotte Mason with guests from Ambleside Advisory Board; “How to Read Shakespeare”; upcoming Jane Eyre series.
• Recommended: Byron’s Don Juan, Molière’s The Ridiculous Precious, works of P.G. Wodehouse.

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Closing Poem

The episode concludes with a moving reading by Thomas Banks of Charles Baudelaire’s ‘Don Juan in Hell’ (89:14), cementing the cross-cultural reach and literary afterlife of the Don Juan myth.

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For passionate readers and those discovering "Don Juan" anew, this episode is a jubilant, wisdom-filled tour through Molière’s masterwork and the enduring power of comic literature on the Western imagination.

Transcript

[Angelina Stanford]

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 back to the Literary Life Podcast. I am Donna Angelina, and with me is the mysterious.

[Thomas Banks]

That doesn't quite work.

[Angelina Stanford]

That does. Don Tomas. Yeah, Don Banco.

[Thomas Banks]

Sure.

[Angelina Stanford]

I'm trying. Give me something to work with here.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, I don't think a Latin version of me would be very convincing.

[Angelina Stanford]

It's true. Neither of us are Spanish, so forgive us both French. We're doing our best here. Multicultural day on the House of Humane Letters. We are discussing Acts 3, 4, and 5 of Moliere's play Don Juan. Now he's a Frenchman doing Spanish characters. See, we're just in the tradition here.

[Thomas Banks]

Indeed, indeed. Actually, the French theater, actually, and the English theater too, at this time, borrowed a lot from Spanish drama, and not just this play, which, as we've already said, is from Tierso de molina, but the 17th century is the golden age of Spanish drama.

[Angelina Stanford]

Shakespeare pulls from some Spanish stuff.

[Thomas Banks]

Shakespeare, it doesn't exist anymore. But he collaborated on a stage adaptation of Don Quixote. No. Yeah. There's like the registry for this play exists, but other than that, he borrowed certain elements from Cervantes. We don't have. We don't know anything about this play. Yeah. And then, of course, he. And you did know this, that he and Cervantes died on the same day.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, what a sad day.

[Thomas Banks]

I know. It's one of those just really odd and interesting coincidences.

[Angelina Stanford]

I like being reminded that European and English literature was a lot more aware of each other and influenced by each other than we might.

[Thomas Banks]

Well, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, these are not, you know, the national literature of one country is not closed off from, or hermetically sealed from another by any means.

[Angelina Stanford]

And I think that sometimes we get that impression because we'll take, you know, we'll take a class on British literature. We'll take a class on Spanish literature. And they're all very kind of Self contained in much the same way, like how we approach history, you know, I'm learning the history of one country. I mean. I mean, a good. A good literature teacher is going to teach English literature in a way that shows you all the international, you know, influences. But. But, yeah, it's easy to forget. They're very aware of each other.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. From the Middle Ages onward, I've been teaching Froissart's Chronicles, 14th century French history with some of my students. And Jean Froissart himself was a very widely traveled man. He had a number of diplomatic offices. Anyway, he attended a wedding once where Chaucer just happened to be there.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, wow.

[Thomas Banks]

And then another occasion. I don't remember what it was. Yeah, I ran into Petrarch. He was just the guy who ran into everybody.

[Angelina Stanford]

Chaucer traveled to Europe. He traveled to the continent. Yeah.

[Thomas Banks]

Also Chaucer, I mean, he had Italian and French connections as well. And I mean, he lifts. Is it Boccaccio he takes? Was it Le Filostrato that he borrows the plot for the knights tale?

[Angelina Stanford]

He's pulling a whole lot from the Decameron.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. Yeah. It's not just one thing, is it?

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, it's been a while since I've taught the knights tale, so you're asking me to go on memory, but definitely. Boccaccio is a huge. Petrarch, too. Is a huge influence on Chaucer. He pulls from Petrarch for the Clark's Tale.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. It's kind of sad. I mean, even today, like when you think the Internet would bring our knowledge of each other's best novelists and dramatists and poets closer together. I don't think I could name a Spanish writer, you know, working today in Madrid or. I'm also woefully ignorant of modern French literature. I know French literature up to about 1950, but after that, it's a blank spot.

[Angelina Stanford]

I'm going to give a hot take right here that we have tried to become deliberately global the more provincial we have become in so many ways.

[Thomas Banks]

I think I agree with that entirely.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

All right, well, we've started off spicy here on this episode of of Literary Life podcast. Before we get going, just a quick reminder over at the House of Humane Letters, you can still register for Ella Hornstra's amazing webinar on the Persian influence. Speaking of global influences on the the CS Lewis's the Horse and His Boy and she. We're continuing to do more work in that area. Like I said last week, you know, the Tree of Stories is not the, the tree of English Literature. It is the tree of Stories, capital S. The archetype of stories. And English literature is one branch and there are many, many branches. And all of those branches are worth pursuing because they all teach us more about story, capital S. Anyway, this is going to be a fabulous webinar and I'm really looking forward to it. And yeah, you can register for [e-mail] just click on the webinar tab and it take you right to the information about how to register. And a webinar is a great way to get your feet wet at House of Humane Letters. If you've been listening to the podcast, I think we do good work here. And a lot of people say it's a free class, but the, the truth is the classes ratchet up quite a bit. I, I put a, put a lot of effort into the classes and webinars which is why my 90 minute webinars regularly go three hours. I'm expecting something similar for Ella's webinar. Yeah, it'll be, it's just a lot, a lot better for you to, if you're ready to go deeper there. And speaking of what we've got going on at the House of humane letters, Mr. Banks and I are teachers there. We own the academy and we're also teachers there. And, and we just have, we've put together such a beautiful faculty and I'm so proud of these guys and the work that they do. And right now it's registration season. It's, it's the Hunger Games. It's, it's. I was joking with our students last.

[Thomas Banks]

Week that this is getting kind of dark.

[Angelina Stanford]

This is our version of the Olympics. Right. Like at least out there stretching, he's getting ready. You know, let's hope the fren judges like us. Inside joke there, but yeah, that's going on. So if you have had your eye on some of those year long classes, every now and then I meet somebody who's a fan of the podcast and says, wait, I didn't know you guys had classes. And then there are other people who leave negative reviews on the Internet that we talk about our classes too much. So there, there you go. We're either not doing it enough or we're doing it too much. But you can go over to our website, you can click on our year long classes tabs and read all the descriptions for all the things that I've got going on. So pre registration is for the next weeks. That's for students and families who are already enrolled in classes. And then on March 2, we will open pre register, pre registration for the Patreon members so they get to go first. And then on March 9, it will open up to the general public and the classes do fill up fast. So, you know, go over there and make your selections and, and get ready. Atley will send out all the instructions and they will be on the website as well. So there's no need to panic. We stagger the registration because we have a tendency to crash website even though we keep expanding the bandwidth and doing more and more things to the website.

[Thomas Banks]

Kind of a good problem to have.

[Angelina Stanford]

It's a good problem to have. It's like our Black Friday sale. Everybody's trying to run in the one small door to get the big screen tv. Yeah. So that's going to be going on for the next several weeks. It's very exciting time of year when everybody's picking out their new classes and the kids are all talking in the student form about, what are you taking? What are you taking? And oh, it's just so great, just so great to have that kind of energy and excitement and enthusiasm from the kids about what they're going to be studying. So check that out. Houseofhumaneletters.com Now, I also feel like I need to say because you guys don't know this, this will, this will drop next week, next Tuesday. But we are actually recording this on Valentine's Day. And I'm not sure how I feel about that.

[Thomas Banks]

It seems inauspicious. Yeah. Vaguely perverse to be doing this particular play.

[Angelina Stanford]

I didn't say this last time, but I was thinking to myself, I'm uncomfortable with how good you are as Don Juan. Do we need to get therapy?

[Thomas Banks]

Wow.

[Angelina Stanford]

Go to couples counseling.

[Thomas Banks]

I hadn't thought that I was.

[Angelina Stanford]

We got a lot of great feedback from the last episode too. People really enjoyed our, our, our performances, shall we say, our acting out. We'll have to do some more of that this episode. People really enjoyed that.

[Thomas Banks]

We should do some common places.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes, we should. And I just want to say about my last week's voices, I'm glad you guys like it because there was no preparation. Mr. Banks sprung that on me, poking at my prod saying method act. So I gave you my best country bumpkin accent. Definitely no actual country bumpkins were harmed in the making of that scene. So, yes, commonplace quotes. What do you have for us, Mr. Banks?

[Thomas Banks]

So I have from Lord Byron's Don Juan Canto the 10th.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, nice.

[Thomas Banks]

This is one of my favorite Passages in all of Byron. When Newton saw an apple fall, he found in that slight startle from his contemplation. Tis said, for I'll not answer above ground for any sage's creed or calculation, a mode of proving that the earth turned round in a most natural whirl called gravitation. And this is the sole mortal who could grapple since Adam with a fall or with an apple.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's fantastic.

[Thomas Banks]

That last couplet is just absolute perfection.

[Angelina Stanford]

Sorry I laughed and ruined it, but your face, your expression was too good.

[Thomas Banks]

I know, it's. We'll talk about this poem.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes, we will.

[Thomas Banks]

Cause this is. If you haven't read Lord Byron, it's kind of an unusual poem from him and I think kind of might cause readers to throw to the wind their idea of what Lord Byron is as a poet.

[Angelina Stanford]

Right. No, I think a lot of people misunderstand him. Well, his celebrity reputation kind of overshadows his work.

[Thomas Banks]

It does, yeah, very much so, yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

So at the end of the episode, after we finish the play, we'll talk about the ways in which the play has influenced other things. And so we'll talk about Byron's poem. But I do feel like I need to say something right now in case the listener at home is saying, did he just say Don Juan? Yes, you did. Do you. Do you want to explain it or should I?

[Thomas Banks]

Well, I think we said this last week, but it bears repeating that the standard British pronunciation of many Spanish names any words that are not English didn't take account of the aspirated J. So it's not just a quirk of Lord Byron. Most English speaking people at the time would have said Jewan.

[Angelina Stanford]

Right. So in the literary world, if you hear Don Juan, they're talking about Moliere. If you hear Don Juan, they're talking about Lord Byron's poem.

[Thomas Banks]

Correct.

[Angelina Stanford]

Someone mentioned to me that they were listening to an audiobook that kept saying Don Juan. And she wondered what was going on with that. And I said, is he British by any chance? And she said, yes. I was like, well, that. That's your answer. That's. That's the way British people say Don Juan. All right, my commonplace quote. I've got another commonplace quote from the same book I quoted from last week, Death at the President's Lodging by Michael Innis. And if you recall, I explained that he is a. An associate appear, another Oxford don at the same time as Lewis and Tolkien. He knows them, he's very friendly with them. And there are a number of reasons I picked this book Up. But the main reason is because I had read in a footnote of another book, a long time ago, maybe a couple years ago, I read it was a book about the development of the detective novel and it mentioned in a footnote that this book had J.R.R. tolkien as a character in it. And so I started on a hunt. I started collecting these books at McKay's and I finally found this one, Death of the President's Lodging. And I read and I've quite enjoyed this book and I will read more. Michael Ennis, I, I really enjoy him, but I, I will read the passage for which I, I read the whole book just to read this. It's. He's a. He's not the killer. Don't worry anybody. She's a passing character. And it's a description of. And it's obviously Tolkien, but it's not named Tolkien. It's an Anglo Saxon professor, which that's what Tolkien was. And of course, I have read this passage to our resident Tolkien expert, Jen Rogers, and she laughed and she said, that is spot on as a description of Tolkien. So friend of Tolkien's, again, this is not meant to be an insult. It's more like an inside joke. In fact, even his name, the character's name is an inside joke. So they're all sitting around and we get introduced to Mr. Michel de Germantes Crispini. The cherubic Bible clerk of the evening before was lying on a window seat with sweets, Anglo Saxon reader, upside down on his stomach. Sweets, Anglo Saxon reader. We have a copy of that. So this is, this is, this is the Anglo Saxon professor. I think even his name here is a joke because Tolkien was reportedly so upset still about the Norman invasion and what it had done to the Anglo Saxon language that he refused to even eat French food or go to a French restaurant.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, he gives him the most French name.

[Angelina Stanford]

He gives him a super French name. I'm pretty sure this is a joke.

[Thomas Banks]

Michel de Guermand. Crespigny.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah.

[Thomas Banks]

Wow.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, that's a triple barreled French.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah. So I think that's a little bit what's going on. All right, so they're all having a conversation, these dons in the common room. And then we're gonna get, we're going to get a description of Crisp Horus peering round the sofa in hope of a clinching ace, answered without heat. Aristotle, or perhaps it was Plato, was a shopkeeper, or perhaps the son of one, I forget. And your own namesake, dear Mike, the sage of Paragord, was a fishmonger. And you are a nasty, unwholesome, misshapen, degenerate, and altogether lousy scion of outworn privilege. And the increasing unpleasantness of your personal habits, your thick and co. Incoherent utterance, your shambling gait, and above all, your embarrassing and indeed painful inability to talk since, have long since convinced David and myself, though we have striven to conceal it, that you are already undermined beyond human aid by the effects of retributive disease. And your tailor, whose taste perpetually astonishes me, let me add, would be grateful for any blood money you might raise on Applebee. It would help feed the eight children. Your bad debts are deriving of sustenance.

[Thomas Banks]

Wow, that's. I was going to say that's a burn, but no, that's. That's more of a conflagration right there.

[Angelina Stanford]

So. So Tolkien had a very large.

[Thomas Banks]

Sorry, but is. Is retributive disease like syphilis?

[Angelina Stanford]

I don't. I don't know exactly.

[Thomas Banks]

A lot of these insults just seem.

[Angelina Stanford]

Gratuitous, so some of them his. Okay, so his thick and incoherent utterance. Tolkien had a speech impediment. Lots and lots.

[Thomas Banks]

I didn't even know that he.

[Angelina Stanford]

Lots of people commented on what a bad lecturer he was. It was because of that he had a speech impediment. And it took me a long time to get to the bottom of why people kept saying he was a bad speaker.

[Thomas Banks]

Wouldn't he also lecture with his back to his.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, that too. He did that too. But that's why Lewis said, yes, he's very difficult to listen to, but if you really try and pay attention, there's going to be genius there. But. But I think. I think a little bit of the turning the back to him, the students, was he was very self conscious about the fact that he was not a good public speaker. And I think it sort of became a bit of an affectation as well.

[Thomas Banks]

I see.

[Angelina Stanford]

I mean, because Chest Chesterfield Churchill had a speech impediment and they just kind of leaned into it and it became his mark.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, I'd forgotten that.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah. Okay, so that's. That his shambling gate. So he kind of walked that way. And also the. The comment about his tailor. So he had a lot of children, he didn't have a lot of money, he didn't dress very well. Anyway, a lot of this is spot on.

[Thomas Banks]

That's amazing.

[Angelina Stanford]

But the author was. I. I put. I put my best person on. I put Jen Rogers on it, and she did confirm she found some letters of who were talking about all three of them. Jim Stewart. Who? Michael. That's Michael. Michael. And this is the pen name of Jim Stewart. So Stuart Lewis and Tolkien, they were friendly with each other and that apparently Stuart had once said to a student that hanging out with Tolkien was like being with a medieval bard. And he, he made the Mead hall come alive.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, that's wonderful. Yeah, I. They must have that type of, that type of authority on one subject. Tolkien and Lewis are great examples, but they're not like the only ones of it in that day. Like you know, if you look at like pretty much all the authors of the oh hell volumes like Douglas Bush would be in.

[Angelina Stanford]

I was thinking of him.

[Thomas Banks]

That type of scholar doesn't exist today. And I was even, even 30 years ago, one of one of CS Lewis's former students edited a volume of tributes to him by people who had known him. You have this book on your shelf.

[Angelina Stanford]

I do.

[Thomas Banks]

And one of them, who is a biographer named John Wayne W A I N which is a funny name for a scholar. Dev. He wrote a influential book about Samuel Johnson. He said that if you went into Lewis's office, you know, for a meeting when he was your tutor, with the hope of impressing him by bringing up like some really obscure sixth rate Elizabethan poet or a theological pamphlet written in 1605 or something, he would know it and he would know everything else the author wrote. Also, like you just couldn't stump him. You never, you were never able to raise his raises brow in quizzical ignorance. Anyway, that's the side of Lewis that I probably admire the most.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, I think the Lewis literary burn is unlike anything else. That is my, that's my favorite part of him for sure. Absolutely. So last time we mentioned that the genre of this play is farce and I said, I promised we would define farce this week. You want to go for that? Explain to our listeners what's a farce.

[Thomas Banks]

Farce is a fairly unsophisticated form of knockabout, sort of rollicking knockabout comedy. And often, often the plot will serve as just kind of a platform for jokes. And I, I would say that the plot in this. I do not know this for a fact. I would guess Monier did not spend a whole lot of time on it thinking about where the story. It's more like a succession of scenes involving the same characters. And it has, I would say it also has kind of a picaresque flavor to it.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay, I would say that too.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

So Farces would be things like the Three Stooges and Punch and Judy. Punch and Judy, Tom and Jerry.

[Thomas Banks]

Basically all Looney Tunes. Yes, cartoons.

[Angelina Stanford]

Taming of the Shrew is a farce. We use the word comedy now to mean haha funny. But originally that's not what comedy meant. Comedy was much more. And still the way we use it here on the podcast, it had much more to do with the literary structure and the shape. That's why the Divine Comedy is the Divine Comedy, even though there aren't a whole lot of laughs in it. And farce is the word you would use for something that was intentionally being put on to get a laugh. That was farce.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

I have to say this, one of my students, I won't say who, so his poor co op teacher will not be shamed publicly here, but he took the Divine Comedy in a co op and the teacher did not understand that comedy meant the redemptive shape of the story. She thought it was haha funny. And she literally told the class, guess it's a divine Comedy because Dante's just laughing at all the people in hell.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh no. Oh my gosh, no. That's really sad.

[Angelina Stanford]

Terms matter, guys. That's. That's not what that means.

[Thomas Banks]

That almost reminds me. Do you. Have you seen the movie Animal House?

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes.

[Thomas Banks]

Okay. Do you remember the lecture on John Milton?

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, vague. Wait, was that.

[Thomas Banks]

It's like. It's the only version. It's like the closest that movie gets to a highbrow joke.

[Angelina Stanford]

Donald Sutherland.

[Thomas Banks]

It's. Donald Sutherland plays. Yeah, A. I think he's like a pot smoking English professor.

[Angelina Stanford]

Of course.

[Thomas Banks]

And he. And he really doesn't like teaching paradise laws, but he has to. And he says John Milton. I know what you're all thinking. He's out of date. His diction is, you know, old fashioned and his jokes don't translate well to our generation. Mrs. Milton thought so as well.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's actually pretty true. All right, so that's what a farce is. And now we're in Act 3. This. I was. I had never read this before. This is absolutely hilarious.

[Thomas Banks]

It is. Yeah. The. This, the disguise scene is one of my favorites, where we meet Skanachel and Don Juan. Scanarel here is dressed as a doctor and Don Juan is a country bumpkin.

[Angelina Stanford]

And that is because in Act 2, they find out that his creditors and.

[Thomas Banks]

Well, all sorts of people are after him.

[Angelina Stanford]

So his idea, it's very Shakespearean. Right, let's switch servant and master. But. But the servant says, no way they'll Kill me. And he said, what kind of servant are you that you're not willing to die for your master?

[Thomas Banks]

And Moliere and the medical profession. I have no idea if he had something personally against it, like a doctor failed to cure or some chronic illness of his. But doctors in Moliere are usually the butt of any number of jokes. And Skane, actually, a couple years after Don Juan, he wrote another play called Le Medecine Malcre Louis, which is the doctor in spite of himself. And in that, Skanel, who is still Skanechel, he has an argument with his wife and she starts giving out in the neighborhood that he is a doctor, that he's a qualified physician, and that he will only admit this to anyone if they beat him. So Scanarel has to pose again. The plot is completely ridiculous, but he has to pose as a doctor, and people start coming to him for medical advice, and he has to just pretend to know what he's talking about. And there's. Oh, there's a famous scene he's talking about anatomy, and he says, so, yes, the heart, as we know, is on the right side of the chest. And. And somebody raises his hand, says, but isn't the heart on the left side of the chest? And he says, no, no. Avant changer tout cela. We have changed all that. You know, the most fashionable bodies these days have the heart on the right side. So, yeah, the medicine is familiar. A chest full of comic potential.

[Angelina Stanford]

Actually, there's a lot in here that reminds me of Jonathan Swift.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes.

[Angelina Stanford]

And there's a huge section in book 3 of Gulliver's Travels Against Doctors.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, I think Swift. I don't know this for a fact, but I think Swift probably took a few jokes from.

[Angelina Stanford]

See, that was my guess.

[Thomas Banks]

I'll just say I can't go into detail because it's not appropriate, but one or two of Moliere's plays involve using a certain form of fumigation as a cure for every disease under the sun. That definitely shows up, literally blowing smoke up a certain orifice.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's literally a scene in Gulliver Shovels.

[Thomas Banks]

I think that might be from Moliere.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay, that. And there's like a long scene about how doctors are never wrong, because if they say they examine you and they say you're gonna die, but you start to recover, they'll give you some medicine and then you'll die. So they're never wrong.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, it's. I know. Like, it's all over. Like. Yeah, 17th and 18th century literature, I guess. Yeah, Medicine was not quite the profession it is now.

[Angelina Stanford]

It was formative.

[Thomas Banks]

And again, this isn't like. Because in the 17th century, this is the time when Harvey discovers the, you know, that the heart is actually the center of the circulatory system. So it is advancing people. But yeah, it's at the same time. Yeah, there' lot of quackery involved.

[Angelina Stanford]

A lot of. Also, I mean, godly. You're going to give me my favorite hyperfocus here. But a lot of the early pharmaceuticals were poisonous. Like, there would be arsenic in it. And like, there's a. You know, Jane Austen's death at 40, there's a huge question mark. We don't really know why. But I read a book recently which made the argument that if you look at her diaries and the kinds of complaints she's talking about, there's a very good reason to suspect that she had had some kind of illness and had been given, like, a cough medicine that had arsenic in it and most likely died of arsenic poisoning from taking this medicine.

[Thomas Banks]

So the fact that we only have six Austen novels is due to a misdiagnosis?

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, well.

[Thomas Banks]

Or maybe.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, you know, not just a misdiagnosis.

[Thomas Banks]

But, you know, another one. I. Fanny Bernie, who was a great influence on Austin, are. You know, that her journals survive. And they're actually a very interesting. Interesting example of an 18th century, you know, literary woman's interior life. She had to undergo a breast cancer operation without anesthetic. And that's. That's like, one of the grizzliest readings from the 18th century. She survived. Yeah. But, yeah, had to having a tumor removed with no painkiller. Anyway. Yeah. So now that this has gotten really dark.

[Angelina Stanford]

It's gotten really dark. Morbid. This is why we have jokes, because the. The medical profession is. It's. It's.

[Thomas Banks]

It's one of those. It's like lawyers, teachers, politicians, and. Yeah. Other professions that, like, we need people to do these. But it's also funny when they don't do their work well.

[Angelina Stanford]

Right. And this whole thing is super, super funny. When he's talking about singing, I can't say his name. The servant. Thank you. Are you just gonna do the voiceover every time I have to say his name?

[Thomas Banks]

I like saying his name, so it's fine.

[Angelina Stanford]

I see that you roll those R's. I wanted to maintain the honor of my gown. And then he says, are you impious? He gets medicine, too. So, like, he. He gets into.

[Thomas Banks]

No, let me read that whole speech. Can we start here at the beginning? Of the scene I'll read for Skanachel, you read for Don Juan.

[Angelina Stanford]

You got it?

[Thomas Banks]

My word, sir, you must admit that I was right and that here are the two of us wonderfully disguised. Your plan wasn't a thing at all. And this hides us much better than what you wanted to do.

[Angelina Stanford]

It's true that you're well rigged out. And I don't know where you dug up that ridiculous outfit.

[Thomas Banks]

Am I? It's the costume of some old doctor that was left in pawn at the place where I got it. And it cost me money to have it. But do you know, sir, already this gown gives me consideration. I'm greeted by the people I meet, and some are coming to consult me just as they would an able man.

[Angelina Stanford]

How's that?

[Thomas Banks]

Five or six country people, seeing me go by, have come to ask me my opinion about various maladies.

[Angelina Stanford]

And you answered that you didn't know a thing about it.

[Thomas Banks]

I? Not at all. I wanted to maintain the honour of my gown. I theorized about the illness and I gave them each a prescription.

[Angelina Stanford]

And what remedies did you prescribe for them then?

[Thomas Banks]

My word, sir, I took them where I could find them. I gave my prescriptions at random. And it would be a funny thing if the patients got well and came to thank me for it.

[Angelina Stanford]

And why not? Just why shouldn't you have the same privileges as all the other doctors? They have nothing more to do with curing their patients than you. And their whole art is pure pretence. All they do is to take the credit for the fortunate results. And you can profit as they do from the patient's good luck, and see attributed to your remedies all that may come from the favors of chance and the forces of nature.

[Thomas Banks]

What, sir, you're impious in medicine too.

[Angelina Stanford]

It's one of the great errors of mankind. What?

[Thomas Banks]

You don't believe in senna or cassia or emetic wine.

[Angelina Stanford]

And why would you have me believe in them?

[Thomas Banks]

You have the soul of a real unbeliever. However, you have seen that for some time emetic wine has been making quite a stir. Its miracles have converted the most incredulous mind. And not three weeks ago I saw me, just as I'm speaking to you, a marvelous effect from it.

[Angelina Stanford]

And what was that?

[Thomas Banks]

There was a man who had been in agony for six days. They didn't know what to prescribe for him anymore. And all the remedies weren't doing anything. Finally they thought of giving him emetic wine.

[Angelina Stanford]

Huh. He got well, did he?

[Thomas Banks]

No, he Died.

[Angelina Stanford]

That was an admirable result. Okay. That really.

[Thomas Banks]

I know. That was great.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah. Funny. It's a little bit. Mark's brothers.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, yeah. Mark brothers. A little bit dirtier, but. Yes.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, but. But that kind of like super fast paced, frantic wit, you know, the jokes are coming so fast. If you laugh, you miss the next joke.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. And I. For anyone who couldn't tell, a mimetic wine would be an early laxative.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, there you go.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes.

[Angelina Stanford]

And the whole thing's upside down because Scannerl says no, no. For six whole days he hadn't been able to die. They made him finally die. Yeah. It's very efficient.

[Thomas Banks]

Could any. Could you ask for anything more efficient? That.

[Angelina Stanford]

All right, and then. And then they go on and Scanarel is upset that Don Juan is acting like they didn't see anything in that tomb.

[Thomas Banks]

Right. And. And the. The statue of the commander. Should we talk about how the statue of the commander seems to gesture to Don Juan?

[Angelina Stanford]

Did that happen in act. That happened in act two. Right, right.

[Thomas Banks]

That's act three.

[Angelina Stanford]

We didn't. Wait a minute. Am I getting ahead of myself?

[Thomas Banks]

I think you're getting ahead of yourself.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes, I am sorry. I'm getting ahead of myself. Okay, so what happens is Skinnerell says, you don't even believe in hell. So we've established that Don Juan doesn't believe in hell. And he establishes himself in this section as being a materialist. Right. I love this whole scene with the poor man.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. This is. I think this is an important one that.

[Angelina Stanford]

So Don Juan said. Says so Senior says, what do you believe? And Don Juan says, what do I believe? Scenario says, yes. And Don Juan says, I believe that 2 and 2 makes 4, scanarel. And that 4 and 4 makes 8. In other words, you know, facts. I believe.

[Thomas Banks]

In fact, he's a remarkably modern man. It's right. You know, it's. Reading this, I. I was reminded that Pascal's Pense was issued around this time. Pascal would have died just about. About four years before this play had been written. And Pascal's Penses, which is a fragment of what he had intended to write, as you may know, he meant to write something vast on the scale of the City of God or the Summa Theologica. But all he lived to complete was, you know, this little book of thoughts. And one axiom he begins with in his defense of Christianity, is that a lot of people in the world I live in, and this is still in the 1600s, there's a lot of skeptics, a lot A certain new kind of skeptic. Call him a Neo Epicurean or something like that, but there's more of them than you might realize. And Don Juan seems to be an.

[Angelina Stanford]

Embodiment of the Enlightenment here.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, Kind of right at the beginning of it.

[Angelina Stanford]

And people are starting to question things. You know, is there any kind of divine reality? Or do we live in a world of facts and natural laws and things like that? I actually really like Scanarel's response here to Don Juan saying four and four makes eight.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes, that's a fine belief, and those are fine articles of faith. So your religion, as far as I can see, is arithmetic. You have to admit men go to get strange follies into their heads. And most of the time people are less wise the more they've studied. For my part, sir, I haven't studied like you, thank God. And no one can boast of ever having taught me anything. But with my own we common sense, my own we judgment, I see things better than all the books. And I understand very well that this world that we see is not some sort of mushroom that came here of itself in one night. I'd like to ask you who made these trees, these rocks, this earth and that sky you see up there, and whether all that built itself now here are you, for example. You are here. Did you make yourself all alone? And didn't your father have to get your mother pregnant in order to make it?

[Angelina Stanford]

You?

[Thomas Banks]

Can you see all the contrivances that the machine called man is composed of without wondering at the way one part is fitted into another? These sinews, these bones, these veins, these arteries, these. This lung, this heart, this liver, and all those other ingredients that are there and that. Oh, good Lord. Please interrupt me if you wish. I can't argue unless I'm interrupted. You're keeping quiet on purpose and letting me talk out of sheer malice.

[Angelina Stanford]

I'm waiting for your argument to be finished.

[Thomas Banks]

My argument is that there is something admirable in man, no matter what you say, that all the scholars could never explain. Isn't it wonderful that here I am and that I have something in my head that thinks a hundred different things in one moment and does whatever it likes with my body. I want to clap my hands, lift my arm, raise my eyes to heaven, bow my head, move my feet, go to the right, go to the left. Forward, backward, turn. As he turns, he falls.

[Angelina Stanford]

Five.

[Thomas Banks]

Fine.

[Angelina Stanford]

Now your argument has a broken nose.

[Thomas Banks]

Good Lord. I'm pretty stupid to waste my time arguing with you. Believe what you like. A Lot I care whether you're damned.

[Angelina Stanford]

So I want to point out a few different things here. One, this is at the beginning of the Enlightenment and this play is obviously operating within a framework that the audience also works in that we have always understood ourselves to live in a sacred universe. The gods are active in our daily lives and in the natural world and they will not be blasphemed. And so for Scannerl to be saying things like, hey, you're breaking the holy covenant of marriage at your own peril here, everyone in the audience would have understood that that's a reality, to borrow Murcia Eliade's phrase. However, the Enlightenment has started and now we are moving away from a secular understanding toward a profane understanding. And Don Juan has that right. Legitimate.

[Thomas Banks]

From a sacred to a profane.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes. What did I say?

[Thomas Banks]

Secular.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh yeah, yes. Sacred. From a. Sorry, thank you. From sacred to profane. Right. That is, we live in a material world. The gods are not involved if there is a God. But he probably doesn't even care about me anyway. He certainly doesn't care who I'm wooing. And I'm just going to go and, and, and live my, live my best sensuous life and I'm not going to worry about too much. That's definitely under the surface here and we can certainly bring out that stuff as we go. But what I don't want you to think is that this is meant to be a serious discussion of these ideas. This is meant to be a comedy. This is, is comedy, farce, comedy. Haha. This is meant to get laughs. But the difference here is that you can still, under the surface, see all of the elements of a basic U shaped comedy of, of a fall in redemption. You'll see that when we get to the end here, that we are still operating.

[Thomas Banks]

Divine justice is served.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's right.

[Thomas Banks]

I think is what you're trying to say.

[Angelina Stanford]

I am. Well, what I meant by the comedy retirement redemption is that at the end, when Scandal says this is good for everybody, so every, everybody else has gone up the U and redeemed. Yeah, but we'll get to more about that at the end. And so there's like, I guess I want you guys to keep two things in your mind at the same time, because we talk a whole lot in here. And if you just listen to my recent conference talk, you heard me talk about, you know, looking past the surface and, and seeing those allegorical archetypes underneath that, that's how the medieval's red. That's still here. But the medievals are very comfortable playing with this. It's variations on a theme, right? It's. I think sometimes people encounter Chaucer and some of his body or humor and saying, like, I don't. I don't see that there's a divine, you know, reality being portrayed under this. There is. It's just that the medievals, and I would put Moliere in this character category, too. They are just very comfortable with this habit of mind so much that they can play with it. They can even make a joke of it and still see it's all started to play.

[Thomas Banks]

You know, for some reason, it kept coming to my mind when I was reading this.

[Angelina Stanford]

This.

[Thomas Banks]

Another writer, very different in spirit from Moliere, but is almost his exact contemporary, is John Bunyan. And John Bunyan, are you familiar with his book the Life and death of Mr. Badman?

[Angelina Stanford]

No.

[Thomas Banks]

Okay. It's okay if you think that the Pilgrim's Progress is sometimes a little on the nose and unsubtle. The Pilgrim's Progress compared to the Life and death of Mr. Badman is like a Chekhov story. Okay. It's in that other book, Bad man is just what it sounds like. It's the life and death of a bad man. And everything he does is unedifying. Everything he does is motivated by selfishness, the satisfaction of some greed or lust or whatever. And in the end, he dies, is unlamented, and goes to hell. And in an odd way, I mean, this is a much. This is a light comedy. Bunyan, you know, intended his for a much more edifying purpose. And it's a very serious sort of book. They. They kind of put me in mind of one another. I mean, they're both 17th century writers of genius sketching, presenting a literary sketch of someone with basically no redeeming moral qualities, with similar fates to his.

[Angelina Stanford]

I was gonna say. Yeah, similar fates. Don Juan also no redeemable qualities. All right, let's keep going. So in scene two, they meet a poor man.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes. And Don Juan is another thing about him is that whoever he meets, whether it's an attractive woman or some man whom he wants to cheat, you know, some man whose wife he wants to steal, he treats every encounter as kind of like a game. Nothing he does suggests that he takes into account that there might be some kind of consequence for my action, because he's used to getting away with it. He's been getting away with it for a long time now.

[Angelina Stanford]

Right, right. No, it's very interesting to me how in these acts, like everything is crashing down on him. His wife shows up, his brother in law shows up, his father shows up, statues appear.

[Thomas Banks]

He doesn't seem too concerned about it.

[Angelina Stanford]

No.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

He thinks he can charm his way out of anything.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Because he has been able to.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes, and everything. But the last thing, basically he can.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes.

[Thomas Banks]

And so this. This poor man, he tries to. He tries to cousin into blaspheming, basically. So the poor man says, alas, sir, I am in the greatest need possible. Need? Don Juan, you must be joking. A man who prays to heaven all day long cannot fail to be in comfortable circumstances. The poor man. I assure you, sir, that most of the time I haven't even a piece of bread to get my teeth into. That is strange. And you are ill rewarded for your pains. Aha. I'll give you a louis d', or, which is a coin right now. As long as you're willing to swear. Poor man. Oh, sir, would you want me to commit such a sin? Don Juan, all you need to do is see whether you want to earn a louis d'. Or. Not. Here's one I'll give you if you'll swear here. You must swear, sir. Don Juan, Unless you do, you won't get it. And anyway, so again, all of that to illustrate that Don Juan sees everything as just kind of a. Kind of a possibility for some sort of entertainment.

[Angelina Stanford]

He also never loses his cool. There's points when Scanarella is like, we need to run. You know, everything's going wrong. And he's like, I got this.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, they work as foils to each other pretty. Pretty effectively, I think.

[Angelina Stanford]

And then we get the appearance of Don Carlos. And so they just happen. Of course. Look, farces operate on a lot of coincidence. You just roll with it, right?

[Thomas Banks]

Correct.

[Angelina Stanford]

And so they rescue a guy who's being robbed. And it turns out that it's Don Juan's brother in law who's in town to kill Don Juan.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. And there's two brothers in law who are. Who are after him.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah.

[Thomas Banks]

So he saves.

[Angelina Stanford]

Met him before.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, he saves the one. And that actually kind of gets him out of. Gets him out of hot water.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes, I'm here. I'm here to. To avenge my sister who's been seduced. Now, let's stop here for a second because a lot of people have asked what exactly is going on with Don Juan? Marries all these women. Is this the trope of the fake wedding which shows up in a lot of places? The vicar of Wakefield, Pamela. You know, guys.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, like guys, the rake who pretends yeah. I'm gonna take you, like honorable intentions.

[Angelina Stanford]

Pamela goes so far that he even fake. Hires a fake priest and convinces this girl they're married and they're not.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, and we should say, for anyone who doesn't know, Pamela is a epistolary novel from kind of the first major epistolary novel in the 18th century by Samuel. By Samuel Richardson. And it was. It was a huge bestseller, basically, because the whole. The whole book is kind of one long titillation, I guess you could say.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah. The subtitle is Virtue Rewarded.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. And it's kind of. Of kind of tongue in cheek. I mean, it's. It's not really about, you know, the How a virtuous woman keeps a predator at bay. But he's always kind of teasing the audience into wanting this poor young woman to be seduced, Right? Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

But something a little bit different's going on with Don Juan, so.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

So what is going on with his idea that he says that he marries them and he'll marry all the women and leave them? Like what. How are we supposed to understand that? Is he a bigamist? Does it not matter in terms of the play?

[Thomas Banks]

I don't think it really matters so far whether he's legally married to all these women at the same time or not.

[Angelina Stanford]

The.

[Thomas Banks]

I mean, the idea is that he only. He tires of a woman as soon as he's achieved her and then moves on to the next.

[Angelina Stanford]

You really are the king of euphemism.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, Yeah. I. I think this is a family.

[Angelina Stanford]

I think what we are supposed to understand. I don't think we're supposed to get hooked caught up in the details of. Is he getting divorced? What's happening? I think what we are to understand is that by promising marriage, he's. He's more of a scoundrel than a regular seducer. Like, these poor girls really do think we're having a lifelong commitment sacrament. And then he tosses them aside.

[Thomas Banks]

Correct. Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

And it makes him worse. I was going to give some examples of other literary characters like this, but thought now that might be spoilers for people who haven't read.

[Thomas Banks]

There's so many. So, yeah. So many literary seducers who have something of Don Juan in them.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, yeah, he. So, yeah, we'll get to that at the end. But he. He. He becomes a sort of archetypal character in literature.

[Thomas Banks]

He does.

[Angelina Stanford]

And again, I. I'm proud of myself for saying that he's based on the lechery character in the Fairy Queen. I think he's I think he's a.

[Thomas Banks]

Walk a lot of that about.

[Angelina Stanford]

I think he's a personification of. Of lust. Okay. So then the other brother, Don Alons, comes and says, oh, that's him. That's the guy we're gonna kill. And then Don Carlos ends up, oddly enough, standing in between.

[Thomas Banks]

Do it now. Since he saved me.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So on the one hand, you've got people kind of caught up in all this. Honor. Don Juan is completely dishonorable, but he's able to sort of manipulate other people's sense of honor.

[Thomas Banks]

And it kind of seems like the universe is on his side, that his. His luck can never run out. And he certainly believes that himself.

[Angelina Stanford]

He does, up until the very end when he's quite shocked. Okay. Then in scene five, they go to visit the. The tomb of the Commander. And so, let remind us again, the Commander, his daughter was seduced by Don Juan.

[Thomas Banks]

Don Juan had seduced his daughter and the Commander, this nobleman, had challenged him to a duel and Don Juan killed him.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay.

[Thomas Banks]

And now he's scoffing at the man's memory.

[Angelina Stanford]

This is just how blasphemous he is, how much he does not believe in any kind of divine retrib or any divine anything that he's like, let's just go in here and visit him. And Scanarel says, that's not a good omen. We don't go. We don't go visit the tombs of people we've murdered.

[Thomas Banks]

So this is midway through scene five. Don Juan looking at the statue. My heavens, he's really decked out with his Roman Emperor costume. Scanner. Hell. My word, sir, that's a fine piece of work. It seems as if he's alive and just about to speak. He looks at us in a way that would frighten me if I were all alone. I. And I think he is not pleased to see us.

[Angelina Stanford]

He would be wrong. That would be a poor way to receive the honor I am paying him. Ask him if he will come to supper with me.

[Thomas Banks]

That's something he doesn't need, I think.

[Angelina Stanford]

Ask him, I tell you.

[Thomas Banks]

Are you joking? It would be crazy to go talking to a statue.

[Angelina Stanford]

Do what I tell you.

[Thomas Banks]

How absurd, my Lord Commander. I'm laughing at my stupidity. But it's my master who makes me do this. My Lord Commander, my master, Don Juan asks if you will do him the honor to come to supper with me.

[Angelina Stanford]

Him.

[Thomas Banks]

And the statue nods its head, says the stage direction. Ah.

[Angelina Stanford]

What is it? What's the matter with you? Speak up, will you?

[Thomas Banks]

The the statue.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, what are you trying to say, traitor?

[Thomas Banks]

I tell you, the statue.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, the statue I'll bring you if you don't speak.

[Thomas Banks]

The statue signal to me.

[Angelina Stanford]

A plague on the rascal.

[Thomas Banks]

It's signaled to me, I tell you. That's the absolute truth. Go on and talk to him yourself and see. Maybe.

[Angelina Stanford]

Come on, you rogue. Come on. I want to rub your nose in your own cow. Cowardice. Now watch. Would the Lord Commander like to come to supper with me?

[Thomas Banks]

The statue nods its head again. I wouldn't have missed that for 10 pistoles.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, sir, come on, let's get out of here.

[Thomas Banks]

There are your free thinkers for you who won't believe anything.

[Angelina Stanford]

Now, one of the things that really struck me was how many times Don Juan says something about getting supper. And I think that that fits in with this. I'm ruled by my belt belly.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, sure, sure. Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

All of. All of his appetites. He's ruled by all of his appetites. His appetite for women and food.

[Thomas Banks]

One in succession after another.

[Angelina Stanford]

Exactly.

[Thomas Banks]

Certainly.

[Angelina Stanford]

Exactly. And so, Act. Five star. Act Four. Sorry, Act. You know me and Roman numerals. I love the Romans. My dear, I know you're a Latinist, but what were they thinking with their numeral system? It makes no sense. Thank God for the Arab sense.

[Thomas Banks]

No, it would be hard to do sums with it, though, I admit.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes, thank God for the Arabs. That's all I got to say. I need my Arabic. Numerous rules. I think it's because I'm a little bit disgraphic. And anyway, that's more than anybody needs to know. But the Roman numerals move around. They're just. There's just two. Yeah. I'm always like, how many is that? They need to stop dancing.

[Thomas Banks]

Another. We'll add it to your list of adorable quirks.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's right.

[Thomas Banks]

Your phone book of adorable, adorable quirks.

[Angelina Stanford]

Like, thank God that. That's the sweetest Valentine's Day thing right there, that you think these are adorable quirks. All right. Act four. We're back at Don Juan's lodging, and we see that Don Juan is completely capable of denying the spiritual realm even when he has seen it with his own eyes. Right. What is really, is my belly. Not the divine.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. And it's. You could play this the previous scene more than one way, but it seems that this, the second gesture that the statue makes. Don Juan is looking at it when it does that.

[Angelina Stanford]

Right.

[Thomas Banks]

But he's still able to convince himself that that didn't happen.

[Angelina Stanford]

Exactly, Exactly. Exactly. Do we want to do this scene.

[Thomas Banks]

Certainly, yes.

[Angelina Stanford]

Whatever it may have been. Let's drop the subject. It's a trifle. And we may have been fooled by a bad light or affected by some sort of dizziness that troubled our sight.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, sir, don't try to deny what we saw with these very eyes. Nothing could be more absolutely true than that nod of the head. And I have no doubt that heaven, scandalized by your life, has produced this miracle to convince you and draw you back. Back from.

[Angelina Stanford]

Listen, if you pester me anymore with your stupid moralizing. If you say the least little word more to me about it, I'm going to call someone to fetch a bull's pizzle. Have you held by three or four men and give you a thousand lashes. Do you understand me?

[Thomas Banks]

Very well, sir, perfectly. You explain yourself clearly. That's what's good about you. You don't go beating about the bush. You say things with wonderful precision.

[Angelina Stanford]

Come have my supper, sir. The wink.

[Thomas Banks]

It's kind of interesting that Scanarel is like this odd compound of sarcasm and flattery and like. Like sycophancy, I guess.

[Angelina Stanford]

He's very interesting like that. To me. He. He's almost like a combination of the two stock characters of the serf, the.

[Thomas Banks]

Servant who knows something the master doesn't. And the. The toady and the lick spin.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes. And there's also the stereotype of the. Okay, so there's the not. St. Stereotype. There's the archetype. The stock character of the helpful servant. So that's Jeeves. But then there's also the stock character of the unhelpful. The unhelpful servant.

[Thomas Banks]

The clownish servant.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes, That's. That's Grumio in the Taming of the Shrew. That's why. That's why he's always hitting and misunderstanding things. And it's almost like Scannerl is both of them.

[Thomas Banks]

Almost. Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Like he's like. In so many ways, he's trying to obstruct what Don Juan is doing. But then when he.

[Thomas Banks]

But he always goes along, he sucks.

[Angelina Stanford]

Up with it and I'll help you, and I'll.

[Thomas Banks]

I was. We were talking about this this morning, but I thought that his. His combination of sycophancy and, you know, kind of. Kind of sarcasm almost reminds me of George Costanza. When I was reading the character, I kept. I started hearing George Costanza's voice as. Yeah, I can't do a George Costanza impersonation.

[Angelina Stanford]

What was the scene? We were joking about this, like.

[Thomas Banks]

Okay, so there's the Scene where Sconel, when he's bringing Don Juan his food, he takes a little bite of it himself. Himself, and is trying to disguise the fact that he did. And it's almost like the scene where George is at. He's at some party, some work party, and he double dips with a chip.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes.

[Thomas Banks]

In the salsa. And someone sees him doing it.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes.

[Thomas Banks]

And. And he. He's, like, defending himself as George does. And. And then you brought up. What was the other one with the eclair?

[Angelina Stanford]

He opens the trash can, and he sees that there's an eclair on the top of the trash can, and he takes it and he eats it. And they're all like, george, did you eat something out of the trash can? He says, no, it was on the trash. It wasn't in the trash. But George, it had a bite out of it already. And he said, well, I didn't bite from that end. I turned it around. But you're absolutely right. It's that kind of humor.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. And the fact that he's always kind of flustered, too.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes.

[Thomas Banks]

That's also kind of a. George. Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes.

[Thomas Banks]

No, I think I'm probably making too much of that.

[Angelina Stanford]

But, yeah, this is good. So what happens in the next couple of scenes is we find out that Don Juan also owes money. He's a debtor, too. So. So it struck me that he steals in a number of ways. Right. So he's. By refusing to repay his debts, he's stealing this money, but he also steals the hearts of these women.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. He thinks that he's also murdered them. The bill will never actually land on his doorstep.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's exactly right. So this whole. No, that's very well said. So this whole scene, and the way he kind of charms, with his facility of language and flattery, charms his way out of having to deal with this debt that becomes a microcosm for the whole play. Like, he. He.

[Thomas Banks]

I thought the same thing. I think you're absolutely right.

[Angelina Stanford]

I don't think the bill will ever need to be paid.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes.

[Angelina Stanford]

And if this is also a parallel scene to when he's trying to juggle the two women. Right. He's juggling that guy, too.

[Thomas Banks]

No, that's very good. It's also. I was thinking of other seducer characters as well, because in Pride and Prejudice also, even though he doesn't go quite as far with it as Don Juan, he does actually get married and, so far as we know, stay married. But, Mr. Wickham, I have been thinking of. He's also. He Also has money problems and he borrows money from this person, that person.

[Angelina Stanford]

Women problems and money problems tend to.

[Thomas Banks]

Go together in literature so very often. And in real life too?

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, yes, but I was thinking more like, how do you portray somebody, a scoundrel? They have gambling debts, which are called debts of honor. So it's the same sort of thing. So the servants come to him and say, your debtor, you know, the guy who owns your. Your debt is here. And we haven't been letting him in and. But he surprises us and says, oh, let him in. I absolutely want to see him. Now, our note here says in English, it doesn't quite work the same way, but if in. If you're reading in French, you would see that Don Juan is using a very familiar and contemptuous way of address to Monsieur Dimash. And, and Monsieur Dimash is. Is talking to him very formally and respectfully. So, no, this is. This is a great scene. And there's something, again, I think this, this is kind of, I think why the Marx Brothers came to mind. If you guys don't know the Marx Brothers, you need to go watch some Marx Brothers movies. They're. They're fantastic. But there's a mad cap, upside downness to so many of these scenes. And so the whole. I'm such. I'm. I'm. Of course I want to pay my debt. Look how much I want to pay my debt.

[Thomas Banks]

I could imagine Groucho doing this.

[Angelina Stanford]

It's just very fast.

[Thomas Banks]

Talking him out the door and not paying him.

[Angelina Stanford]

Exactly. So. Right. He talks him out the door and the whole time the guy's like, whoa, whoa, whoa. What? And then he's gone.

[Thomas Banks]

There's. It wasn't one of the movies, but one of my favorite bits that Groucho did was what was the show he had? You Bet yout Life. Did you ever watch that on, like.

[Angelina Stanford]

I watched.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. Okay. Anyway, yeah, like he was at his. I think he was like at his best on that particular thing.

[Angelina Stanford]

He could improv.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. And there's one where he has a young couple on. They just got married. And Groucho turns to the guy. They're like this kind of all American couple from Everywhereville. And he says, you have a really beautiful wife. Do you mind if I kiss your wife on the cheek? And the guy says, over my dead body. And Groucho says, I think I could. I bet you $10 I can kiss your wife without noticing it. And the guy says, you're on. And Groucho just hands him $10 and kisses his Wife. Why, it's like up. You noticed. Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes.

[Thomas Banks]

It's a total kind of.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, it's a total John Juan thing. Yes, absolutely.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. But. Yeah. Should we read some of this with Monsieur Dimash?

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay. Tell me. Tell me where to pick it up.

[Thomas Banks]

Okay, so. Page 384 here. So. Monsieur Dimash, sir, I am very obliged to you.

[Angelina Stanford]

Good heavens, you rascals. I'll teach you to leave Monsieur Dimash in an antechamber. I'll say that. You'll learn who's who.

[Thomas Banks]

Sir.

[Angelina Stanford]

Sir, that's not nothing to tell you I'm not there. You. Monsieur Dimash, My best friend, sir.

[Thomas Banks]

I'm your servant. I came.

[Angelina Stanford]

I'm quick. A seat for Monsieur Dimash.

[Thomas Banks]

No, no, I'm sorry. I'm fine like this.

[Angelina Stanford]

No, no, I want you to sit beside me.

[Thomas Banks]

It's not necessary.

[Angelina Stanford]

Take away that folding chair and bring a comfortable one.

[Thomas Banks]

Sir. You're joking.

[Angelina Stanford]

No, no. I know what I owe you. And I don't want any distinction sewn between the two of us.

[Thomas Banks]

Sir.

[Angelina Stanford]

Come sit down.

[Thomas Banks]

There's no need, sir. And I've always only one word to say.

[Angelina Stanford]

I came there, I tell you.

[Thomas Banks]

No, sir, I'm fine. I'm coming to.

[Angelina Stanford]

No, I won't listen to you unless you sit.

[Thomas Banks]

I will, sir, since you insist. I miss.

[Angelina Stanford]

My heavens. Monsieur Dimash. You're looking well.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes, sir. At your service.

[Angelina Stanford]

You look, I came before, the picture of health. Red lips, ruddy complexion, sparkling eyes.

[Thomas Banks]

I would like.

[Angelina Stanford]

Your wife.

[Thomas Banks]

Very well, sir. Thank heaven.

[Angelina Stanford]

She's a good woman.

[Thomas Banks]

She is. Your servant, sir. I was coming.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, Claudine. How is she?

[Thomas Banks]

She couldn't be better.

[Angelina Stanford]

What a pretty little girl she is. I love her with all my heart.

[Thomas Banks]

You do her too much honor, Sir.

[Angelina Stanford]

I. Colin, is he still making as much choices ever with this drum?

[Thomas Banks]

As much as ever, sir.

[Angelina Stanford]

I. Brisket. Does he still growl as loud as ever? Does he still bite at the legs of the people who come to your house?

[Thomas Banks]

More than ever, sir. And we can't break him of it.

[Angelina Stanford]

Don't be surprised if I ask for news of the whole family, for I take a great interest in them.

[Thomas Banks]

We are infinitely obliged to you, sir. I.

[Angelina Stanford]

Then shake hands on it. Monsieur Dimash, are you really a friend of mine?

[Thomas Banks]

Sir, I am your servant.

[Angelina Stanford]

By heavens, I'm yours with all my heart.

[Thomas Banks]

You do me too much honor. I.

[Angelina Stanford]

There's nothing I wouldn't do for you, sir.

[Thomas Banks]

You are too kind to me.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's without self interest. Please be. Please believe me.

[Thomas Banks]

I certainly have not deserved this favor. But, sir.

[Angelina Stanford]

Dimash, don't stand on ceremony while you have supper with me.

[Thomas Banks]

No, sir. I have to go right back.

[Angelina Stanford]

I'm quick a torch to guide Monsieur Dimash and four or five of my men to take muskets to escort him.

[Thomas Banks]

Sir. Sir, that's not necessary. And I'll go back perfectly well alone. But.

[Angelina Stanford]

What. I want you to be escorted and take too much interest in your personal welfare not to. I am your servant and what's more, your debtor.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, sir.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, that's a thing I don't hide. I tell it to everybody.

[Thomas Banks]

If.

[Angelina Stanford]

Would you like to show me? Would you like me to. Oh, my goodness. Would you like to have me show me. You, out.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, sir, you're joking, sir.

[Angelina Stanford]

Brace me, please. Once again, I beg you to believe that I am entirely at your disposal and that there's nothing in the world that I wouldn't do to serve you.

[Thomas Banks]

Don. MAN EXITS no, that. That scene was. That was a brilliant bit of. What. What is it? Is it stick omithia?

[Angelina Stanford]

It is stick omythia.

[Thomas Banks]

It's sticker Mythia, a dramatic term for where there's a long exchange between two characters on stage. And the lines, the individual lines are very short and they keep interrupting each other.

[Angelina Stanford]

See that in Much Ado About Nothing, the way Shakespeare.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. I was going to say, probably most great dramatists kind of have to have that in their arsenal of tricks.

[Angelina Stanford]

You know, we take that for granted now. It's become such a standard part of our filmmaking. But it took a really long time for them to develop this technique. I mean, if you think about the early dramas, well, the first of all, it was just one character on stage in the chorus. And so it was just one person gives long speeches. CHORUS SINGS yeah, it's kind of interesting.

[Thomas Banks]

That, yeah, the ancient Greeks, until Aeschylus was the first of the Greek dramatists, the second character on stage along with the first, apart from the chorus. But prior to that, there was a generation or two of Greek dramatic performances where, like, you would have a character monologuing or choric interludes. But, yeah, dialogue. For some reason, that took a while to.

[Angelina Stanford]

It does take a while. Like, if you read something like the Iliad, it's like Achilles stands up and gives a long, long monologue. Sits down. Agamemnon stands up and gives a long, long monologue. But. But that kind of, you know, witty repartee, it takes a long time to get that. And we think of that, I think, as very unnatural way of talking it's not really. People are not really that smooth and. And musical. This is very staged, but it's a lot of fun to watch when it's. When it's well done.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

The banter. But I would say, in addition to the stick of Mythia, there's something kind of screwball comedy going on here too.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah.

[Thomas Banks]

Mulier sparkles as a. As a comic writer.

[Angelina Stanford]

He's fantastic. The pacing is so good. I think I wasn't prepared for how fast this was gonna be.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, I know.

[Angelina Stanford]

Very fast.

[Thomas Banks]

He's. He's not as profound and a dramatic artist as Shakespeare, but he does have.

[Angelina Stanford]

Have.

[Thomas Banks]

He does have a winsome lightness that never, never deserts him. And another play of his, by the way, if this one has caught your interest and you want to go farther, one in the same. I think it's in the same volume. Let me double check. Yeah. The Ridiculous, Precious and the. This is about a couple of girls who have read the wrong sort of fiction, maybe, and they want men to court them in the manner of. The manner of sentimental writers. And they. They dump. I think they dump their boyfriends at the beginning of the play because they don't measure up to the heroes that they have read about in books. So the guys very much like the.

[Angelina Stanford]

Country bumpkin being mad that he's not. Something about that doesn't love him the right way.

[Thomas Banks]

Anyway, in. It's an interesting example, a comic example of literature getting in the way of love.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, that's great. Something else I found myself thinking about speaking of Moliere's light touch. And I think this is something perhaps modern storytelling could take a lesson from. But he shows us that you can very quickly paint a portrait of a very, very profligate character without actually showing him engaging in any.

[Thomas Banks]

No, I mean, like, this is. I mean, Moliere has one or two plays where, yeah, there actually are some kind of revolting things that happen, but this is. I think he exercises a kind of tasteful restraint all the way.

[Angelina Stanford]

Very much so. Like. So, I mean, you know, he suggests.

[Thomas Banks]

A lot more than he actually shows.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's right. That's right. And. And. But we don't need to be shown. We.

[Thomas Banks]

We've.

[Angelina Stanford]

We got the picture. We know exactly what kind of man we're dealing with.

[Thomas Banks]

But. Yeah. Anyway, scene.

[Angelina Stanford]

Ford, his dad shows up.

[Thomas Banks]

So the. The old, you know, kind of conservative man who's rebuking his son for his wayward life. And Don Juan really just wants to, like, get him out the door.

[Angelina Stanford]

And he's like, oh, no, I'll handle this. I'll just play the hypocrite.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, yeah. And he. He does sort of mock repent for his father eventually and says, yes, of course. Course I'm going to amend my life. I'm going to go study at a monastery and all that kind of thing.

[Angelina Stanford]

I did want to point out in scene four, Don Luis, very long monologue here, which he concludes, in short, knows that a gentleman who lives badly is a monstrosity in nature, that virtue is the first title of nobility, that I am much less concerned with the name, a man's signs than with the deeds he does, was. And that I would set more store by the son of a porter, who was a decent man than by a king's son who lived as you do. There is a very long tradition in literature of these kinds of characters coming up and raising the question of essentially, what is true nobility? Is it a title or is it. Is your. Is your character? We see this in a number of places. In Chaucer, for example, it comes up in the Wife of Bath's Tale. It comes up in the Franklin's Tale.

[Thomas Banks]

One of the most interesting, interesting passages in Shakespeare's Henry V, too. He puts these kind of reflections actually in the mouth of Henry V himself, when he's wandering around his camp in disguise the night before Agincourt. And there's that great speech, O ceremony, show to me thy worth. And he asks himself, you know, when does a king suffer more deeply than a common man? Are the passions and, you know, sufferings of monarchs worth, worth more in some kind of universal scheme than those of a peasant who, you know, dies unsung and unlamented And. But, yeah, that's. That. That is a theme that a lot.

[Angelina Stanford]

Of the great writers shows up in Jane Austen. I mean, go back, back to Wickham, you know, everyone's fooled by his gentlemanly manners. And she raises the question of what. What is a gentleman? Is it. Is it wealth? Is it title? Is it the appearance of a gentleman? Or is it something else?

[Thomas Banks]

He returns to that idea a number of times. Because it's an Emma, too, Because, you remember, Emma doesn't to want. Want Harriet to take up with Mr.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes, the former the farmer, the good Gabriel.

[Thomas Banks]

No, no, no, that's Thomas Hardy.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, No, I saw what I did there.

[Thomas Banks]

Martin. Mr. Martin. Robert Martin.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes.

[Thomas Banks]

And. But Mr. Knightley sensibly points out that this is actually a really good match for Harriet. And anyway, that's. I'm getting. I'm getting us off track Here.

[Angelina Stanford]

But again, you know, this is a light comedy, and I wouldn't want us to think, oh, well, going to. The point is for us to sit around and talk about what is true nobility. But I would say that all of these are just underlying.

[Thomas Banks]

It reminds us that there's like a moral center to the universe, even in the midst of all of Don Juan's amusing iniquity. Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

And it's also a good reminder that just because an author is doing something lighthearted and playing doesn't mean he doesn't know there's a moral center to the universe. He doesn't know that there's a moral framework. It's okay to laugh. So. So Don Louis ends up saying, well, first of all, Don Juan tries the exact same tactic with the debtor, right? He says, oh, sir, if you sit down, you'll be more comfortable for talking. And Don Luis says, no, insolent wretch. I will not sit down or talk any longer. And you see very well that all my words make no impression on your soul. But no, unworthy son. That a father's tenderness is exasperated by your actions. That I shall contrive sooner than you think to set a limit to your transgressions, forestall heaven's wrath upon you and wash away by your punishment the shames of having given you life.

[Thomas Banks]

So Don Louis then exits, and Don Juan. Oh, die as soon as you can. That's the best thing he can do. Each man must have his turn. And it makes me furious to see fathers who live as long as their sons.

[Angelina Stanford]

Ah, sir, you're wrong.

[Thomas Banks]

I'm wrong, sir? I'm wrong?

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes, sir, you're wrong to have endured what he said to you. Yeah, that's the ticket. You should have taken him by the shoulders and put him out. Could anything be more impertinent For a father to come and make remonstrances to his son and tell him to mend his ways, remember his birth, lead the life of a decent man, and a hundred other foolish things of the same sort. Can this be endured by a man like you who know how life should be lived? I marvel at your patience. Patience. And if I had been in your place, I would have sent him packing. Oh, cursed compliance, how low will you bring me.

[Thomas Banks]

Will my supper be on soon?

[Angelina Stanford]

All right, so back to the belly. Now, Signorella's speech is a completely upside down right. Like it is a good thing for a parent to advise their child.

[Thomas Banks]

But he's saying, no, you're the victim here.

[Angelina Stanford]

Right, Exactly. But that's because there's something just very upside down about Don Juan himself. And so Signarilla has to talk to him him in this upside down way. But of course, in the next act, it will all be righted. The world will write itself. And then, if that wasn't enough, Donna Elvir shows up herself.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, and it's.

[Angelina Stanford]

I mean, everything's crashing down between her.

[Thomas Banks]

And the father, you know, they're. The kind of sobering gravity of their speeches contrasts so beautifully with his sarcastic responses to them.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes.

[Thomas Banks]

But. Yeah, we don't need to read everything she says. But if you just turn to page 393 and read from I have loved you with extreme tenderness. If you want to read that out loud.

[Angelina Stanford]

I have loved you with extreme tenderness. Nothing in this world has been so dear to me as you. I have forgotten my duty for you. I have done everything for you. And all the return I ask of you is to reform your life and to forestall your destruction. Save yourself, I pray you, either for love of yourself or love of me. Once again, Don Juan, I ask you this in tears. And if the tears of a person you have loved are not enough, I beseech you, by whatever is most capable of touching you.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, tiger heart.

[Angelina Stanford]

After these words, I'm leaving. And that's all I had to tell you.

[Thomas Banks]

Madam, it's late. Stay here, we'll put you up as well as we can.

[Angelina Stanford]

No, that. Don't detain me any further, Madam, you.

[Thomas Banks]

Will give me pleasure by staying, I assure you.

[Angelina Stanford]

I tell you, let's not waste time in Puerto. Let me go quickly, don't insist on seeing me out, and simply think about profiting by my warning. That was hilarious that he's like, oh.

[Thomas Banks]

No, I really want you to stay.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, right. I'm trying again. Family friendly. But yeah, he would love for her to stay the night. And he tells his servant, I've never seen her look more beautiful. But what struck me here is we've basically got the three fairy tale warnings, right? So the first warning comes from the statue, then we get a warning from the father, and then from.

[Thomas Banks]

I hadn't even noticed the rule of three.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes. So he. And he ignores all three chances to repentance.

[Thomas Banks]

So then in the final scene of Act 4, the statue actually does show up.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's right, because he's been invited and.

[Thomas Banks]

He still doesn't take. He doesn't. He doesn't seem afraid really here, even when the statue appears. I mean, he's should point this out.

[Angelina Stanford]

Before the statue appears. That Signorella again says, are you going to reform? And he says, yes, my word, we must reform another 20 or 30 years of this life and then we'll think of our souls.

[Thomas Banks]

But I mean, it's. It's not suggested that he really means this at all.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, of course not. It's more just. I never have to pay the bill.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes, exactly.

[Angelina Stanford]

Just keep pushing back the consequences. But, but before we get to the. To the. The Act 5, which goes very, very quickly, the nature of the warnings. I mean, the father basically says, perdition is coming and I'm going to cast you off. And then his wife says, I've decided to forgive you and beg your repentance. Please repent of this and I don't want you back. This isn't selfless, but for the sake of your own soul, please. And. And he won't hear any of it. I mean, he doesn't think past his belly. So again, he thinks about his appetite for her. And then she leaves and he calls. Calls for food. And then the statue comes up. Because of course the statue has been guided, has been invited to dinner. And he shows up and he treats.

[Thomas Banks]

It kind of again as another game. Yeah, yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Says again, it's a chair.

[Thomas Banks]

A chair in a place. Please come. Come on now. Sit down to table. And scanner says, sir, I'm not hungry anymore.

[Angelina Stanford]

Sit down there, I tell you. Bring us drinks to the health of the Commander. I drink it with you, Scandarel.

[Thomas Banks]

Give him some wine, sir. I'm not thirsty.

[Angelina Stanford]

Drink up and sing your song to entertain the Commander.

[Thomas Banks]

I. I have a cold, sir.

[Angelina Stanford]

No matter. Come on. The rest of you, come here. Accompany his voice.

[Thomas Banks]

And the statue says, Don Juan, that's enough. I invite you to come to supper with me tomorrow. Will you have the courage to.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes, I'll come with only Scaryl for company.

[Thomas Banks]

Ah, thanks just the same. Tomorrow is a fast day for me.

[Angelina Stanford]

Take this torch. And the statue says, we need no light when we are guided by heaven. Which of course points to the difference between the material world and the sacred world. Oh, it's just all so good. Am I reading too much that I got. I got so many Banquo vibes from this scene. Like, you know, the ghost figure coming to dinner and sitting down and the host getting kind of weird about it, you know?

[Thomas Banks]

And I think it's so interesting that Shakespeare was completely undiscovered country for the French in the French literary scene at this time. I mean, the English were drawing influence from France, but England.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, French would have thought I would have thought they were so superior.

[Thomas Banks]

They wouldn't have these things better over here and.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

They would not. I guess I'm trying to say the road between France and England only went one way in terms of influences, because the French thought themselves so much higher.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. I.

[Angelina Stanford]

My gosh, in many ways, the English thought that, too.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, Supposedly. Now I'm trying to think. I think Victor Hugo. He's at least the first French writer I know of who unambiguously mentioned Shakespeare in a positive light. But prior to that, and Victor Hugo's writing in the, you know, the first half of the 19th century, Shakespeare is at best treated with a kind of condescension, I guess, and often much worse than that.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay, all right. So Act 5. A countryside near the town. And then later, the tomb of the commander. And Don Juan has decided to play the hypocrite to his father. And so he says, you know, I've decided to repent. And the father's quite happy to hear that. It's a. It's a little bit like the prodigal son here. Because, Don.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. It's a mockery of the prodigal son.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, Right. We're tracking.

[Thomas Banks]

You're reading my thoughts.

[Angelina Stanford]

Because the dad immediately is like, I take you back. I welcome you. I'm glad you've repented.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes.

[Angelina Stanford]

And then Scene two, Scannerl takes it as if it's real.

[Thomas Banks]

Walks off. Scone. Ah, sir, what joy I have in seeing you converted. I'd been waiting for that a long time. And now, thank heaven, all my wishes are fulfilled.

[Angelina Stanford]

A plague on the nitwit.

[Thomas Banks]

How's that? The nitwit.

[Angelina Stanford]

What? You're taking what I've just said at face value. You think my lips were in agreement with my heart?

[Thomas Banks]

What? It's not. You don't. You're. You're. Oh, what a man. What a man. What a man.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, no, I'm not changed a bit. And my sentiments are still the same. You.

[Thomas Banks]

You don't surrender to the amazing marvel of that moving and talking statue.

[Angelina Stanford]

There's something, certainly is something in that which I don't understand. But whatever it may be, it's not capable of either convincing my mind or shaking my soul. And if I said I wanted to reform my conduct and enter upon an exemplary way of life, that was a plan I formed out of pure politics. A useful stratagem, a necessary pose that I want to hold myself to in order to keep on the good side of a father whom I need. Need. And to protect myself against a Hundred unpleasant adventures that might come my way from the direction of men in general. I'm willing to confide this in you, Scanarel, and I'm very glad to have a witness of my inmost soul and the real motives that oblige me to do things. What?

[Thomas Banks]

You don't believe in anything and yet you want to set yourself up as a good man?

[Angelina Stanford]

And why not? There are so many others like me who ply that trade and use the same mark mask to take advantage of people.

[Thomas Banks]

Ah, what a man. What a man.

[Angelina Stanford]

And then he gives a long speech here about all fashionable. Fashionable vices pass for virtues and hypocrisy is a fashionable vice. Which of course must be a reference to Tartuffe.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, the role of the good man is the best of all roles a person can play today. And there, there's wonderful advantages to the hypocrite's profession. But, yeah, absolutely. No, see, gosh, Ms. Stanford, we really are tracking. I, I. It seems that a lot of the, a lot of the themes that, that Moliere dealt with on Tartuffe, he's revisiting in a different light in this play as well.

[Angelina Stanford]

Tartuffe, of course, is Moliere's earlier play about a hypocrite. We covered that play on this podcast and you can find those episodes.

[Thomas Banks]

He's a religious hypocrite who's trying to cheat his patron out of his house.

[Angelina Stanford]

That was also.

[Thomas Banks]

It's a brilliant play. Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

No, I am so enjoying this. All right, so it's almost like. So he's dealing with everybody in reverse order now. Right. So statute. So was dad. Now he's dealing with dad, and then it's the debtors. So he's dealing. Is it reversed? It's sort of reversed. I'm overthinking this. So he has a hypocritical tone here with Don Carlos. With all my heart, I would love to give you the satisfaction that you want, but I've repented.

[Thomas Banks]

I know I can't have anything further to do with your sister. Alas. And Don Carlos, you will have taken my sister out of a convent and then left after. That is the way that heaven ordains.

[Angelina Stanford]

And he even goes so far as to say this is what she herself wanted. She told me she's going back to the convent. I mean, I couldn't possibly change.

[Thomas Banks]

It's the will of God.

[Angelina Stanford]

It's the will of God. Yes. And of course, they've come for satisfaction in the old way. You know, they want to, they want A duel. And he. He does manage to talk his way out of it. So so far he's talked his way out of everything. But there's going to be one debt he can't talk his way out of.

[Thomas Banks]

So, scene five. Don Juan, a specter as a veiled woman, and Skanache.

[Angelina Stanford]

But again, the specter as a veiled woman. Okay, that's what I was thinking. It is reverse, because the specter of the veil woman, that's the veiled woman earlier, was Don Donna Elvira.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes.

[Angelina Stanford]

So he is having to deal with everything.

[Thomas Banks]

All right. So, Skunnerhal, seeing the specter. Oh, sir, this is heaven speaking to you. And this is a warning it's giving you.

[Angelina Stanford]

If heaven is giving me a warning, I will have to speak a little more clearly if it wants me to.

[Thomas Banks]

Hear it, Don Juan. And the specter says, Don Juan has but a moment left to take advantage of heavy heaven's mercy. And if he does not repent now, his doom is sealed. Do you hear, sir?

[Angelina Stanford]

Who dares to utter these words? I think I know that voice.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, sir, it's a specter. I recognize it by its walk.

[Angelina Stanford]

Specter, phantom or devil. I mean to see what it is.

[Thomas Banks]

The specter changes its shape and represents time, scythe and hand.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay, again, that's kind of a Shakespeare move there. But time, it's. This is the grind. This is the Grim Reaper, right? He's got. He's got few a face. Death. This is his final justice.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, heaven. Sir, do you see how the shape has changed?

[Angelina Stanford]

No, no, nothing can terrify me. And I mean to test with my sword whether it's body or spirit.

[Thomas Banks]

The specter flies away as Don Juan is about to strike it. Oh, sir, yield to all these proofs and quick, take the plunge of repentance.

[Angelina Stanford]

No, no, it shall not be said, come what may, that I am capable of repenting. Come on, follow me.

[Thomas Banks]

And the statue arrives. The statue stopped on one. You gave me your word yesterday to come and eat with me.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes. Where do we go?

[Thomas Banks]

Give me your hand. Here it is, Don Juan. Obduracy and sin brings on the dreadful death. And heaven's mercy rejected. Opens the way to its lightning.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, heaven, what's this I feel? An invisible fire is burning me. I can bear no more. And my whole body is turning into a fiery furnace.

[Thomas Banks]

The thunder falls on Don Juan with a loud crash and brilliant flashes. The earth opens up and swallows his him, and great flames issue from the pit into which he is fallen.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay, let's pause there for just a Second. So I loved this because this is a man who's been following his burning passions this whole time, and now he's burned up by those same passions at the end.

[Thomas Banks]

And just to remind us that this is not a tragedy, but a comedy.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's right.

[Thomas Banks]

Skanerel has the last line. Skanarel. Oh, my wages, my wages. There. Everybody is satisfied by his death. Offended heaven, violated laws, seduced girls, dishonorable family, families outraged, outraged parents, wives led astray, Exasperated husbands. Everyone is happy. I'm the only unhappy one. I, who after so many years of service, have no compensation but to see my master's impiety punished before my eyes by the most frightful chastisement in the world. My wages, my wages, my wages.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's hilarious. Even in the face of that, he's thinking of.

[Thomas Banks]

He's thinking about his money, his mortal. He's a man of the belly too, ultimately.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes, exactly. That was fantastic. That was fantastic. I hope you guys can see, of course, the U shape of the comedy there that we've talked about on the podcast so often.

[Thomas Banks]

Sometimes teaching pieces like this, I find it harder than more complicated works because, I mean, Moliere, I mean, he's. Like I said, I mean, he's so effervescently light that sometimes coming up with things to say about him just because he's so clear a writer becomes almost kind of a task in itself.

[Angelina Stanford]

And I think too that it's easy to, to just think, oh, there's just lightness here. There's nothing of depth in terms of.

[Thomas Banks]

Artistry, but it repays rereading. I mean, this is. I noticed a couple of things. I mean, well, I'm reading with you and that might be a reason why. But this is the. What, maybe third time I've read this play and yeah, you do see new things.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, you know, Northrop Fry talks a lot about this, that we have a tendency in our culture to value tragedy over common comedy and to think that, I mean, just think about what, what movies get nominated for best Picture. It's serious things, right? It's. It's not movies that make you laugh.

[Thomas Banks]

And I'm using things about which critical think pieces can be written.

[Angelina Stanford]

Right. And so, and it's partly because we tend to think the tragic view of life is the more realistic one and, and light hearted things. We, you know, we don't think that that's serious enough depth. And of course, historically the medievals found all kinds of things hilariously funny and, and could equally think about things of depth and Play with them and be light hearted about them and funny and carefree, kind of the way like the elves in the Hobbit are both serious and kind of playful and silly, like you can have both. But we do tend to value tragedy more highly. And so I think it's easy to dismiss something that makes you laugh as. As being not as artistic. But the truth is it is way easier to make people cry than it is to make them laugh.

[Thomas Banks]

Laugh. I would, I would agree with that.

[Angelina Stanford]

I mean, that's why scholars generally agree that the. The greatest 20th century writer in English is P.G. woodhouse, because his wit and his ability to make you laugh out loud from what you read, that is not easy to do.

[Thomas Banks]

I don't think scholars have admitted that, but it might be true nonetheless.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, it was Christopher Hitchens, he.

[Thomas Banks]

There you go.

[Angelina Stanford]

He said, the greatest writers in the English language, you know, another century where George Orwell and P.G.

[Thomas Banks]

Wodehouse, Hilaire Belloc, almost. The last thing that Hilaire Belloc wrote before he suffered a incapacitating stroke was an introduction to a weekend volume of P.G. wodehouse stories in which he called him the head of my profession. Oh, yeah, high praise.

[Angelina Stanford]

My oldest son, who is now 29, but was. Maybe he was 15 at the time, 15 or 16, he had read that Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens article, and he had come to me and said, Christopher Hitchens says, you know, the masters of the English language are George Irwell and P.G. wodehouse, and that if you want to learn how to write, you should read them. So he said, do we have any of those authors?

[Thomas Banks]

And I would absolutely agree, of course.

[Angelina Stanford]

I said, yes. And he read them and is still. Still. My son's still a writer.

[Thomas Banks]

Woodhouse never wrote a bad sentence. No, he was incapable of being dull.

[Angelina Stanford]

I think that's exactly right. It's exactly right. All right, so let's talk then about how this play goes on to influence other things. So what, 100 years later?

[Thomas Banks]

So if. Yeah, Byron's. Byron, let me see. Byron's Don Juan. He published over the course of several years, and he was actually still working on it at the time of his death. It, it, if you read the poem, it breaks off at the beginning of the 17th Canto, I think, in the middle of a line. So it's one of those. Yeah, I don't know, it's like Mozart's Requiem. It's one of those great unfinished works of art. But it's. There's enough of it that it really is one of Byron's major poems and.

[Angelina Stanford]

Basically the same story just told by Byron.

[Thomas Banks]

Well, okay, he puts an interesting. He turns it, he emphasizes the picaresque element. So he has Don Juan wandering all over Europe, I think, you know, going on the grand tour and that kind of thing. And it serves. He's not so much interested in the hero himself whom he makes kind of pitiful. He's not really a great seducer, but, but a guy who keeps. A guy who falls in love too easily with the wrong kind of woman. So he's not, he's not like, you know, the masterful rake so much anymore as kind of like the wayward guy, lovelorn adolescent. But he's wandering all over Europe and that gives Byron opportunities to. Opportunities for satirical digression. He names names, he mocks writers who don't quite measure up to his standards. Byron, he's one of the major romantic writers. But we should not assume therefore that he admired his fellow other major romantic authors. Whenever he mentions Wordsworth Southey, John Keats, to name three. Yeah, it's always, it's always scathing. And there's. Sorry, but there's another poem of his called the Vision of Judgment in which Robert Southey has died and he's appearing before the judgment seat in heaven. And as, as an expression of his righteousness, he holds up his biography of John Wesley in three volumes and the Angelicos are like, really? We have to let this dullard up here? Please could we send him somewhere else? Anyway, very funny poem.

[Angelina Stanford]

And to be fair, Byron does admire young Wordsworth. It's just he thinks Wordsworth still became a sellout when he became the poet laureate.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, the fact that Wordsworth. Wordsworth became a member of the establishment and he became a Tory conservative. Byron thought that was a little bit, a little bit of a turncoat.

[Angelina Stanford]

Byron dies a young man too. So, you know, kind of like, kind of like how Paul McCartney says about John Lennon. We, we only have young John Lennon's words. We don't know what he would have been like had he grown up.

[Thomas Banks]

That's true. I, I see. Yeah. Those are kind words from Sir Paul. I cannot imagine Byron aging gracefully. I don't know about John Lesbian canon Byron though. Imagine middle aged Byron. I think that could be kind of a. Kind of a not so edifying site. But we won't, we won't even go there. Yeah, we won't go there, but yeah. So his, his poem Don Juan, it's one of the major works of verse satire in English. It's, it's A mock heroic poem, which is a kind of, a, kind of a sub genre unto itself, I guess you could say, where you take a sort of pitiful character, but you ironically describe his exploits in a way that makes him sound like Achilles. So Byron is having a lot of fun poking, poking criticism at Juan or Juan and his, his romantic career as it was, were.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, that's fantastic.

[Thomas Banks]

Making fun of European arts institutions, political figures, crowned heads and writers along the way.

[Angelina Stanford]

Okay. So I was in graduate school when the Johnny Depp movie Don Juan DeMarco came out. And one of my favorite professors who I became very close to, she was our Byron scholar and she was nuts about that movie. She was after all of us to watch it. And she just kept going around saying, it's, it's Byron's Don Jim, it's Byron's Don Jim. Kind of.

[Thomas Banks]

It has the Byron. Yeah. The kind of mock sort of romantic air about it. And for anyone who doesn't know that the Movie Don Juan DeMarco, it's Johnny Depp and Marlon Brando and Johnny Depp is Don Juan, but we're not even sure if he's Don Juan. He could just be a guy who, a crazy guy who thinks he's Don Juan because it's set in the present day, but he still dresses like an, you know, know 18th century Spanish nobleman and Marlon Brando is the psychologist who is supposed to diagnose him and try to convince him to rejoin the world. It's one of those movies I think is hilarious. I also can't recommend it because there's a lot of nudity in it.

[Angelina Stanford]

I've never seen it. I'm so glad you okay.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. Anyway, it's not for young viewers, perhaps I saw it when I was far too young, but anyway. But yeah, it does actually kind of have the, the something of the air of Byron's poem, though it does. Just doesn't follow it by any means in the plot.

[Angelina Stanford]

So, yeah, so Don Juan, but, but.

[Thomas Banks]

Do read the Byron poem or at least parts of it. It's, it's, it's one of those poems like you can kind of pick up any canto at a go and, and find something to laugh at because it is just riotously funny.

[Angelina Stanford]

So the character really does transcend Moliere and even Byron because I, you know, the word Don Juan becomes synonymous with a seducer. You know, we still call people, oh, he thinks he's such a, A Don Juan.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, we never think of a figure of fun necessarily. We just think of the. You know, the unprincipled rake.

[Angelina Stanford]

Right, right. So good. Good to know he got his just desserts.

[Thomas Banks]

He gets his just desserts here.

[Angelina Stanford]

I'm so glad you suggested this. This was a lot of fun.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, I thought it was. You know, he's a well known author, but the play itself is a little bit out of the way and not something that most people necessarily would pick up on their own. So I wanted to give it some advertisement.

[Angelina Stanford]

And the Patreon Forum is killing it with this book. I'm loving the discussion over there and how you guys are able to see what, what he's doing. And some of, some of you guys pointed out that there was a lot of Little Red Riding Hood imagery with the way that Don Juan spoke to the women about, you know, their, their lips and their mouth. Oh, you know, same sort of thing. So, yeah, definitely they're writing at the same time. Well, this has been a whole bunch of fun. Again, you can register for [e-mail] or register for Ella Hornstra's webinar On the Horse and His Boy. We'll be back next week with a best of episode of an episode that a lot of people said they didn't even realize we did. It's the Literary Life of Charlotte Mason. And we've got a couple of the ladies from the Ambleside Advisory Board who are going to come on to talk to us. And Cindy will be on that episode as well to talk about the literary life of Charlotte Mason. Then after that, we'll have a brand new episode called how to Read Shakespeare will come with strategies and recommendations and how one should approach Shakespeare. Shakespeare. And then after that, we'll start a nice long series on a book that has been requested for a very long time. We heard you. You're getting it. Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. The other Bronte, not the one that's everybody's talking about on Valentine's Day. That's all we'll say about that. All right, well, thanks so much for tuning in. You can join our [e-mail] the Literary Life and have access to our our exclusive forum for more in depth conversations. In addition to having early access to our classes and other fine goodies. Stick around to the end of this podcast because Mr. Banks has a special poem for us. Until then, keep crafting your literary life because stories will save the world. 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 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 poet Thomas Banks.

[Thomas Banks]

Don Juan in Hell by Charles Baudelaire Translated by Roy Campbell when having reached the subterranean wave, Don Juan paid his passage from the shore, proud as antisthenes. A surly knave with vengeful arms laid hold of either oar, with hanging breasts between their mantles, showing sad women writhing under the black sky, made as they went the sound of cattle lowing, as from a votive herd that's led to die. Scanachel for his wages seemed to linger and laughed, while to the dead assembled there, Don Luis pointed out with trembling finger the son who dared to flout his silver hair. Chilled in her crepe, the chaste and thin Elvira, standing up close to her perfidious spouse, Seemed to be pleading from her old admirer for that which thrilled his first unbroken vows. A great stone man in armour leapt aboard, seizing the helm the coal black wave he cleft. But the calm hero leaning on his sword, had eyes for nothing but the wake they left.