I. Acto primero
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A prose comedy in three acts for B2
The Maidens’ Consent El sí de las niñas
Leandro Fernández de Moratín, 1875
Leandro Fernández de Moratín’s comedy of 1806, complete and not an adaptation. In the catalog it is B2: about 19,400 words and 6 words per sentence on average, because it runs almost entirely on dialogue. Three acts in one night at an inn in Alcalá de Henares, about a girl, her mother and the older suitor who has been chosen for her.
- B2
- 19 411 words
- 3-5 hours
Will this text hold?
B1
Earlier
At B1 the 1875 spelling (tia, estraña, esponerme, á for a) and old courtesies will make you stop often, though the short lines help you recover the thread.
B1B2
This text
You can manage it at B2: the lines are short and everyday, and what slows you down are the old spelling and the odd rare word, which you can translate one by one.
Check this passageC1
With room to spare
At C1 the play reads freely; only Doña Irene’s long tirades, with their old household and medical vocabulary, still ask for the occasional pause.
Start readingThe average sentence has 6 words, because the play is all dialogue and the speaker labels and one-line answers (“No Señor.”) pull the count down, so the figure understates the work. One word in about eighteen has 9 letters or more (5.4%), almost the same as El burlador de Sevilla (7 words per sentence, 5.2%), the catalog’s other Spanish stage play at this level; La vida es sueño has 11. What makes it B2 is the 1875 spelling (á for a, estraña, esponerme), the courtesies and household vocabulary of the early 19th century, and Doña Irene’s speeches, which leap from topic to topic. The three acts are even: about 6, 5 and 6 words per sentence. This is the catalog’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 19 411
- words
- 6
- words in an average sentence
- 3-5
- hours of reading
- 1875
- Librería Mayol (viuda Bartumeus)
Librería Mayol (viuda Bartumeus), 1875. Project Gutenberg
What it is about, without the ending
Don Diego, a well-off man well past youth, has arranged to marry Doña Francisca, a girl of seventeen just brought out of her convent school. Her mother, Doña Irene, is delighted with the match and with the money that comes with it. The three of them stop at an inn in Alcalá de Henares on the way to Madrid, and during one night the servants, a young officer and a good deal of secret letter writing complicate the plan. What Francisca really says, and how the night ends, is not revealed here.
Compare two places
El sí de las niñas
II. Acto segundo
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Choose an underlined word.
Read the 1875 spelling as modern
This edition prints á for a and writes tia, tambien, estraña and esponerme where we now write tía, también, extraña and exponerme. When a word looks odd, say it aloud or add the missing accent or letter in your head and the modern word appears.
Dots mark a speaker who trails off
Doña Irene never finishes a thought: the dots (...) show her jumping to the next worry mid-speech. Do not hunt for one long sentence. Take each piece between the dots on its own, and the speech becomes a chain of short remarks about money, illness and her daughter.
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
Don Diego’s remark on a long-awaited visit, “con media hora de visita y cuatro lágrimas, estaba concluido”, reads clearly as a whole sentence, but the dry irony is easy to miss word by word: translating the whole sentence in Reader helps.
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 abridgement: Moratín’s complete comedy in three acts, first staged in 1806, with the list of characters. The reader follows the 1875 Barcelona edition (Librería Mayol, viuda Bartumeus) from Project Gutenberg, with the spelling of its time. The title page of the first edition, shown as the cover, names the author as Inarco Celenio, his pen name in the Roman Arcadia academy.
Is there an audiobook?
The Maidens’ Consent 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 desvencijadas or carromateros.
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes, with the Reader plan. In this play it helps most with ironic lines such as Don Diego’s “con media hora de visita y cuatro lágrimas, estaba concluido”, and with Doña Irene’s speeches full of dots and asides. Without the plan, single words are translated up to the daily limit.
How many hours does it take?
The whole play takes about 3-5 hours: the pace of someone reading with translation of new words, slower than a native speaker’s. It has three acts of about 5,900 to 6,700 words each, so one act makes an evening.
Where does the text get easier?
It is even. Act II is slightly lighter (about 5 words per sentence, 4.6% long words), and Act III has the most long words (6.1%), but the differences are small. The real obstacle, the 1875 spelling and the old household vocabulary, is the same from the first page to the last.
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 three acts also opens from the contents on this page.