THE COUNT OF VILLAMEDIANA
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which contributed to the legendary nature of his hero. There is a
proverb which says "Things are not made by their names." But, of
course, they are. Many things exist because of their names. The Don
Juan who was to be the epitome of a whole kind of masculinity,
could not be called Enrico or Leonidio, like any of his half-realized
ancestors. In order to become a symbol he had to be called Juan
Tenorio: Juan, the name that evokes, however sacrilegiously, the
sweet and visionary disciple whom women loved, and who loved to
be near them. And Tenorio, which connotes
((tener,"
to possess, and
also
((tenor,"
the man with the sexually equivocal voice, whose notes
fly upward in the nocturnal serenade like so many poisoned arrows.
Scarcely any of the playwrights or poets who have created new
versions of "El BurIador" have dared to change that unchangeable
name. Don Juan owes a great deal of his personality to the fact that
his name is Don Juan Tenorio.
Very well then, if it was no flesh and blood gentleman named
Tenorio who inspired Tirso, who was it?
Villamediana. A donjuanesque life.
It would be easy
enough to cite donjuanesque characters and incidents which must
have passed before the friar's keen eyes, in the decadent Madrid of
the seventeenth century, during the years when his creation of Don
Juan was taking shape. But Don Juan's most characteristic, most
salient features, have most in common with those of the Count of
ViIlamediana, who was the ornament and scandal of the Court, and
who for many years held the attention of Spaniards, especially of
Spanish women. One cannot believe that the details of the Count's
life, which was so typically donjuanesque, and created so strong
3i
general impression, would have had no effect upon Tirso de Mo–
lina's avid sensibility. The culmination of Villamediana's life took
place in the year 1622, and Tirso supposedly wrote his play some–
time before 1630. So the notion that Villamediana's life may have
influenced him is chronologically tenable.
I will mention merely the donjuanesque elements of this man's
remarkable life. ViIlamediana was a typical nobleman of the Sp.anish
Renaissance. Bold, witty, a man of great personal charm, and fun–
damentally immoral. Both his bearing and his good looks won the
admiration of his contemporaries. Many years after the Count's
