El Condenado Por Desconfiado

by Tirso de Molina

El condenado por desconfiado. Tirso de Molina. Espa This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 8423919390
• ISBN13: 9788423919390
• Release Date: January 1990
• Publisher: Elliot's Books

Customer Reviews

a good Catholic allegoric melodrama

El Condenado por desconfiado was originally attributed to Tirso de Molina, to whom the very first version of Don Juan was also accredited, which is interesting because I could not imagine two more disparate plays than these two. While Don Juan starts the fashion of Satanic men in the world literature, Condenado is the Catholic play par excellence, a baroque version of a Christian allegory about the existence of free will, a Catholic [story]that denies the key teaching of the then rising Protestantism. It tells the story of a Don Juan-like youngster without any scruples, who commits hideous crimes but at the end he repents its sins and in a Don Juan-like grandiose scene he goes to Heaven. Meanwhile another man who always lived the life of a saint starts to lose its faith and after failing to convert the above-mentioned though guy starts to live a life of crime and at the end he goes to Hell. So the moral of the story is (I hope I did not spoil your expectations by telling the story) the optimistic Catholic doctrine that there is no predestination, each one of us can be saved (if we choose to be Catholics). Reading these can make the impression that this play is too didactic and heavy-handed, but it is not. Despite the appearances of obvious Catholic symbols, like the little shepherd looking for his sheep, the play does not feel awkward, like most of the Christian allegories do. The author, like many Spanish authors, had the gift of making the characters believable and thus the seemingly corny story line is plausible, even moving.