I. Jornada primera
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The first Don Juan play, in verse, for B2
The Trickster of Seville and the Stone Guest El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra
Tirso de Molina
The complete verse play traditionally attributed to Tirso de Molina and printed in 1630, not an adaptation. In the catalog it is B2: about 16,000 words and 7 words per sentence on average, a low figure because the verse is cut into short lines. Three jornadas follow the seducer Don Juan Tenorio from Naples to Seville; the difficulty lies in the verse and the 17th-century Spanish, not in long sentences.
- B2
- 16 048 words
- 3-4 hours
Will this text hold?
B1
Earlier
At B1 the verse will slow you down: inverted word order, forms like agora, aquesto and prendé, and long speeches such as Tisbea’s opening monologue in the first jornada need patient, word-by-word reading.
B1B2
This text
You can manage it at B2: most of the play is quick dialogue in short lines, so you can read to the full stop, translate single words and, with the Reader plan, whole sentences in the long speeches.
Check this passageC1
With room to spare
At C1 the play reads freely; what remains is the baroque wordplay on honor, the burlador’s puns and the background of the 17th-century stage.
Start readingThe average sentence has 7 words, which looks like an A2 figure but is not: in a verse play every speech is cut into short lines, speakers’ names stand on their own and the exchanges are quick, so full stops come often. One word in nineteen has 9 letters or more (5.2%), inside the B2 range, and no complete original in the catalog is rated below B2. The fair comparison is Life Is a Dream (La vida es sueño), the catalog’s other 17th-century verse play, which has 11 words per sentence and is also B2. The real difficulty is the verse and the Spanish of 1630: inverted word order to fit the rhyme, forms like agora and aquesto, vos forms such as fiáis, and set speeches that run over many lines. By jornada the average is about 8, 6 and 6 words per sentence. Hence B2. This is the catalog’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 16 048
- words
- 7
- words in an average sentence
- 3-4
- hours of reading
Wikisource. Wikisource
What it is about, without the ending
Don Juan Tenorio, a young nobleman, tricks the Duchess Isabela in Naples by passing himself off as her lover, and flees to Spain with his servant Catalinón. Shipwrecked on the coast near Tarragona, he is saved by the fisher girl Tisbea, and in Seville and the village of Dos Hermanas he goes on deceiving women, among them Doña Ana, whose father is the Commander don Gonzalo de Ulloa, and the bride Aminta. His father warns him that heaven punishes, and Don Juan answers with a joke about how long the reckoning will be put off; one night he dares to invite a stone statue to supper. What the guest does is not revealed here.
Compare two places
El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra
II. Jornada segunda
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Choose an underlined word.
Read to the full stop, not to the line break
In verse one sentence runs over many short lines, so follow the punctuation, not the line ends. Catalinón’s rant is built on a joke: God put so much water in the sea, so why not so much wine (“¿no juntara tanto vino?”). Abrenuncio de ella echoes the baptismal vow to renounce the devil: he swears off water, even holy water. Vella is an old form of verla, the pronoun fused with the verb to fit the rhyme.
Vos for God, and the play’s refrain
Juan answers Don Diego’s warning that God punishes after death with the line that gives the play its refrain: “¿Tan largo me lo fiáis?” Fiar means to sell on credit, so it reads “do you give me such a long credit?”, and fiáis is the respectful vos form, here addressed to God. Ha de plus an infinitive (“te ha de parecer”) says what will certainly happen: the reply “Breve te ha de parecer” is a threat that the time will seem short.
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 Diego’s reproach to his son, one sentence runs over four lines (“Que aunque me lo has encubierto, ya en Sevilla el rey lo sabe, cuyo delito es tan grave, que a decírtelo no acierto”) and the thought is only finished in the last one: whole-sentence translation in Reader keeps the thread.
ReaderIf this book is not the one
Spanish books B1 Earlier Damned for Despair El condenado por desconfiado Another book by the same author B2
All books at this level
Before you read
Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
It is the original, not a learner’s adaptation: the complete play in three jornadas, in verse, traditionally attributed to Tirso de Molina and first printed in 1630. The reader follows the transcription on Spanish Wikisource, which does not name the edition it comes from; the cover shows the title page of an old printing from around 1630. The catalog also has Zorrilla’s later Don Juan Tenorio as a B1 retelling (don-juan-tenorio-adaptacion), the same legend.
Is there an audiobook?
The Trickster of Seville 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 the Spanish of 1630, such as agora, aquesto or fiáis.
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes, with the Reader plan. In verse it helps most where one sentence runs over several lines, like Don Diego’s “Que aunque me lo has encubierto, ya en Sevilla el rey lo sabe, cuyo delito es tan grave, que a decírtelo no acierto”. Without the plan, single words are translated up to the daily limit.
How many hours does it take?
The whole play takes about 3-4 hours: the pace of someone reading with translation of new words, slower than a native speaker’s. It has three jornadas of about 5,400, 4,500 and 6,100 words, so one jornada is a comfortable evening.
Where does the text get easier?
It is fairly even. The first jornada has slightly longer sentences, about 8 words against about 6 in the other two, and its densest stretch is Tisbea’s long opening monologue. The quick exchanges between Don Juan and Catalinón read faster than the set speeches in every jornada.
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 return to the play where you left off. Each of the three jornadas also opens from the contents on this page, for example the second one, where Don Juan meets his father.