Don Juan

Don Juan, a dramatic character embodying sensuality and libertinism unchecked by conscience and followed out to the end. He has been described as a southern Faust, of the senses not of the intellect, and portrayed not in poetry hut in music. His life is a drama of lawless love. He seeks to seduce the daughter of the Governor of Seville, slays the Governor, penetrates afterwards to his tomb, and gives a banquet to which he invites the stone statue of the Governor. The statue appears and drags Don Juan away to Hell. According to another version. Don Juan sold himself to the Devil, but repented and died a monk. The story was dramatised early in the 17th century by a monk named Gabriel Tellez. Moliere used it (1665) in his Don Juan ou le Festin de Pierre, and Shadwell (1676) in his Libertine. Mozart's Don Giovanni (1787) is also on this theme. Alexander Dumas used it for his Don Juan de Marana, and Prosper Merimee his Ames du Purgatoire; and Byron's Don Juan lays it in some degree under contribution.