396
PARTISAN REVIEW
But the truth of the matter is
That Bellido killed him,
But the King gave the word.
Nobody doubted the poets' version of the tragedy. The Spanish
people accepted it, and still do, as an article of faith. The following
stanza, alluding to the murder of the unfortunate lover, is a variant
of a Spanish original, and was found by G. Bayo among the singers
of La Plata.
They have killed Cupid
Behind a carriage.
Who sent Cupid
Out into the dark?
Poor Cupid! He was up to worse things than being out in the dark.
Once again the poets were mistaken. They are nearly always
mis–
taken when they listen too closely to the rumors in the street. King
Philip IV was a gay, kindly man. We have a fairly intimate picture
of him, in his correspondence with Sister Maria de Agreda. And
there is nothing that we know about him which might lead us to
suspect that he was the instigator of the murder. On the contrary,
as we have just seen, the King charitably hushed up
his
rival's
disgrace.
Tirso de Molina, therefore, had before
his
very eyes a pedect
model for
his
Don Juan. A Don Juan with all his glories, and with
all his miseries, including the final one. Neither I nor anyone else
can claim that he was making a direct copy when he wrote
El
Burlador.
I do not wish to quarrel with the scholars. But I do say
that these typically donjuanesque events could not fail to make an
impression on the sensibility of that great dramatist and keen judge
of humanity, and that they must have contributed, therefore, to the
creation of his immortal character. In the last analysis,
if
I were
driven to say who was the first real-life Don Juan, I should not
hesitate to name Villamediana.
Don Juan's pardon.
This, then, is my interpretation of
Don Juan and his legend:
his
attitude to love implies an indeter–
minate sexuality rather than the proverbial notion of
him
~
the
