I. Acto primero: Libertinaje y escándalo
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A Romantic verse drama for B2
Don Juan Tenorio Don Juan Tenorio
José Zorrilla
José Zorrilla’s complete play in verse, first published in 1844, not an adaptation, in the Wikisource transcription of Zorrilla’s complete works. In the catalog it is B2: about 22,400 words and 6 words per sentence on average. Two parts and seven acts about the Seville libertine Don Juan Tenorio and the novice Doña Inés; the verse, not the sentence length, is what makes it slow to read.
- B2
- 22 434 words
- 4-6 hours
Will this text hold?
B1
Earlier
At B1 the verse will be slow going: the lines are short, but the word order is inverted, a speech can run for ten lines before the verb arrives, and the vocabulary of honour and bravado is rich. Start with the MovaReader B1 retelling of the play, then come back to the original.
B1B2
This text
You can manage it at B2 if you read by speeches rather than by lines: most exchanges are quick and short, so translate single words and a few whole sentences, and Don Juan’s long speeches repay a second reading.
Check this passageC1
With room to spare
At C1 the play reads freely; what still slows you down are the Romantic rhetoric, the old forms such as pluguiera and the odd Italian phrase in the inn scene, not the grammar.
Start readingThe average sentence has 6 words, fewer than the 11 of the catalog’s B1 retelling of the same play (about 12,600 words), because verse breaks speech into short lines and clauses; by act it runs from 5 (second act of the first part) to 9 (last act of the second part). One word in nineteen has 9 letters or more, close to La vida es sueño (one in twenty). By the catalog’s measure, which counts sentence length and long words, that is B2, level with El burlador de Sevilla (7 words per sentence), El sí de las niñas (6) and La vida es sueño (11). These numbers understate the real difficulty: the play is in verse, mostly short rhymed lines, with inverted word order, thoughts that run over several lines and vos forms such as decís and tenéis, so it reads slower than a B2 novel of the same size. This is the catalog’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 22 434
- words
- 6
- words in an average sentence
- 4-6
- hours of reading
Wikisource. Wikisource
What it is about, without the ending
Seville, 1545, carnival night. Don Juan Tenorio, a young nobleman famous for his duels and his conquests, meets Don Luis Mejía in Buttarelli’s inn to settle a bet made a year ago: which of them has done more harm since, by killing men and seducing women. Don Juan then raises the stakes with two new targets, a novice about to take her vows, Doña Inés, and Don Luis’s own fiancée, Doña Ana, and he hires the old go-between Brígida to help him. Honour, and the anger of Doña Inés’s father, Don Gonzalo de Ulloa, are on the line. In the second part, five years later, Don Juan comes back to Seville and has to face what he left behind. How it ends, and whether he is forgiven, is not revealed here.
Compare two places
Don Juan Tenorio
IV. Acto cuarto: El diablo a las puertas del cielo
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Choose an underlined word.
Verb first, subject last
In verse the subject often comes after the verb: “Corre ahora por Sevilla poco gusto y mucho mosto” means “these days Seville has little pleasure and plenty of wine”, with poco gusto y mucho mosto as the subject. Look for the noun that comes last before you decide who does what. Buen agosto is the servant Ciutti’s idiom for a good season of trade.
Wait for the end of the stanza
“Esta aura que vaga, llena de los sencillos olores de las campesinas flores que brota esa orilla amena; esa agua limpia y serena que atraviesa sin temor la barca del pescador que espera cantando el día, ¿no es cierto, paloma mía, que están respirando amor?” is one question: the subjects (esta aura, esa agua) pile up and the verb están respirando only arrives in the last line. Read to the question mark before translating, and notice that each stanza ends on the same refrain with a new pet name for Inés.
Chapters
Translation while you read
The book stays free on every plan. Reader, €1 a month, removes the daily limit on words and sentences.
Reader
€1 a month
In Don Juan’s speech to Doña Inés, “¡Ah! ¿No es cierto, ángel de amor, que en esta apartada orilla más pura la luna brilla y se respira mejor?” runs over four lines; translating the whole sentence in Reader gives you the question in one piece, which word-by-word lookup does not, because of the inverted order of más pura la luna brilla.
ReaderIf this book is not the one
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Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
It is the original, not a learner’s adaptation: José Zorrilla’s complete drama in verse, both parts and all seven acts, first published in 1844. The text comes from Spanish Wikisource, transcribed from an edition of Zorrilla’s complete works, without the list of characters; the cover shows the title page of the 1844 first edition (Imprenta de Repullés, Madrid). For a simpler B1 version of the story, see the MovaReader retelling of the play (adaptation).
Is there an audiobook?
Don Juan Tenorio has no audiobook on MovaReader: here the play is read on screen. The translation appears when you tap a word, and you will need it most for old or rare words such as arquilla or pluguiera.
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes, with the Reader plan. In this play it helps most where one thought runs across several lines, as in “¿No es cierto, ángel de amor, que en esta apartada orilla más pura la luna brilla y se respira mejor?”. Without the plan, single words are translated up to the daily limit.
How many hours does it take?
The whole play takes about 4-6 hours: the pace of someone reading with translation of new words, slower than a native speaker’s. There are seven chapters, the acts, of about 1,600 to 5,000 words, so two or three acts make an evening.
Where does the text get easier?
It stays fairly even. Sentences average 5 to 7 words in six of the seven acts and reach 9 in the last act of the second part, and long words stay between 4% and 6% throughout. The difficulty comes from the verse and the inverted word order rather than from one hard stretch; Don Juan’s long speeches are the densest passages.
Will my place in the book be saved?
Yes. Once you sign in, the reader keeps your last place and the words you opened, so you can come back to the play where you left off. Each of the seven acts also opens from the contents on this page.