Don Juan Tenorio

play by Zorrilla

Written and fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Article History

Don Juan Tenorio, Spanish drama in seven acts by José Zorrilla, produced and published in 1844. The play, a variation of the traditional Don Juan story, was the most popular play of 19th-century Spain.

Zorrilla’s Romantic style and sensibility are revealed in the rollicking story of the young nobleman Don Juan who drinks, duels, and wenches his way through Sevilla. The young novice Ines chastely falls in love with Don Juan, then dies after he abandons her. Don Juan later kills her father, Don Gonzalo. Years later, a statue of Don Gonzalo—the requisite “stone guest” of Don Juan tales—appears to Don Juan and shows him a vision of hell. Ines also appears to him and asks him to repent; as in no other versions of the story, he does so, though not until he is dying.

While Zorrilla’s Don Juan is as selfish and lusty as his other literary counterparts, he is more an enchanter than a calculating seducer, and his vivid last-minute conversion adds a moral air to the play.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Kathleen Kuiper.