SOURCE: Lundelius, Ruth. “Tirso's View of Women in El burlador de Sevilla.”Bulletin of the Comediantes 27, No. 1 (Spring 1975): 5-14.

In the following essay, Lundelius views the moral weakness of the four women Don Juan seduces in El burlador de Sevilla as proof of Tirso's misogyny.

That Tirso brought before his audiences a rich variety of feminine dramatis personae, whom he often drew with a certain rare verve and empathy, is now little more than a critical cliché. But a bolder view, first propounded around the turn of the century by that untiring enthusiast of Tirso, Blanca de los Ríos, would align Tirso with the more extravagant admirers and champions of womankind. For instance, she claimed that Tirso “realizó una verdadera glorificación de la mujer” and lamented that in the preceding century “a tal poeta le tuvieron los preceptistas y le tiene aun parte del vulgo por...