Analysis of “The Playboy of Seville” and “The Libertine”
Introduction
Tirso de Molina’s Playboy and Thomas Shadwell’s Libertine are play that explicitly conveys men’s utter malice resulting from lack of conscience. Both playwrights were written during the seventeenth century thus highlighting cultural dissipations of the time some of which are similar to present times. Themes in both plays help underscore other moral decadence like corruption, murder, rape, sexism, and injustice. Molina and Shadwell highlight similar depravities using different approaches, while Shadwell uses more explicit and overt language to illustrate his characters depraved personalities and social menace, Molina uses implicit yet concise approach to emphasize the evils in his characters. Molina and Shadwell are successful in using their plays to highlight specific societal evils of the time that have materialized well through dialogue. This essay will discuss societal and cultural principles pertaining to love, gender role, and honor code as highlighted in both plays, as well how the topics relay immorality during the time.
The subject of honor code is depicted numerous times in both plays to mean different things. In Molina’s Playboy, honor means not doing undignified acts like seducing a woman in a king’s palace. However, contradiction arises when the same person who wants to disassociate himself with disgraceful men does disgraceful acts. For instance, Don Pedro in Molina’s play is quick to call his nephew a “man without honor” for seducing a woman in the king’s palace yet he himself refuses to capture an offender because he happens to be his nephew and he goes on to lie to the king about the offenders ‘escape’. Molina helps relay men’s justifications for undue cases while they still maintain their right to honor. Shadwell’s Libertine also presents the word honor, which means varied things. For instance, Don John equates Jacom’s fear of being hanged beside them as “an honor” that he will never deserve. Don John’s acuity of honor in his comment means that his group’s courage makes them admirable people that deserve respect and that Jacom’s cowardice will never promote him to that status. In another situation, Molina uses the word honor to mean reputation for instance when Isabella got intimate with Don Juan she says, “I have lost my honor”. Shadwell also uses the word honor to mean reputation in the instance when Jacom faulted Don Antonio for impregnating his sisters and he then claimed to have “sa’vd the Honor of the family” by doing so.
The theme of gender role comes out through men’s chauvinistic tendencies and their lack of respect for women. Scene 1 of Molina’s Playboy begins with a man who seduces a noble woman that has been betrothed to another man. Don Juan claims to have acted the way he did out of love, but in an earlier version had told the victim that he is the man that had enjoyed her. This scene shows the objectification of women as beings of pleasure rather than individuals with their own minds. Shadwell also conveys women’s role as pleasurable beings for men. The urgency for pleasure blinded the male characters as to whom they were having intimate relationships with. Don John and Don Antonio had sexual relations with their female relatives; Don John with his auntie and Don Antonio with his two sisters. Don John had to kill his father so that he could have his auntie he continues to say “Her eyes would have killed me if I had not enjoy’d her”. Men play the role of providence and women play the role of homemaking. According to Don Antonio, having sexual relations with his sister made him to save the honor of the family because he impregnated his two sisters a role that he believes had he not done, other men would have. This depiction by the two playwrights confirms that the society was patriarchal and men dominated women.
The theme of love in both plays is mostly between a man and a woman. During Scene 1 of Molina’s Playboy, the audience sees a man who has seduced a woman and goes on to claim so. The culprit Don Juan says to his uncle Don Pedro that he did the act out of love because “It was love that drove me to this”. Don Juan goes on to say, “A man who loves is blind” and uses the phrase to justify himself to another man as the cause of his disgraceful act. Shadwell’s play also depicts factors such as love for some of his characters outrageous acts he says that “To all the powers of Love and might Lust, In spite of formal Fops I will be just” to mean that he will surrender to his urge for love. Additionally, Shadwell uses characters to describe love between a man and a woman as durable feeling when Leon says, “What tears he wept, seeming to suffer all cruel pangs Lovers e’r endured”. Love is blamed as the cause of undignified actions such as seducing a woman in the king’s palace.
Conclusion
Molina and Shadwell are successful in conveying societal and cultural conventions of their time pertaining to gender role, love, and honor code. Both playwrights were written and published in the seventeenth century and therefore show some of the cultural clinging of the time. The society in both plays is depicted as patriarchal whereby; men dominated women and saw them as pleasurable beings. Women objectification as pleasurable beings made some men engage in incest as in the case of Don John and Don Antonio in Shadwell’s Libertine. Honor was a critical aspect of people lives and it meant different things to different people. When Isabella in Molina’s Playboy allowed herself to be seduced by man she was not aware of, she became distraught and claimed that she had lost her honor. When Jacom said he did not want to suffer the fate of hanging that awaited Don John and his three friends, Don John said that he does not deserve such a fate because he would have been a coward among courageous men. Love in both plays is presented as a feeling between men and women. In addition, it is given as an excuse for some of the men’s atrocities against women. Molina and Shadwell have successfully interrogated societal codes and cultural implications using characters dialogue to relay their harms.
Work Cited
Molina, Tirso De. The Plaboy of Seville or Supper with a Staue. 1616. Web.
Shadwell, Thomas. Shadwell, Thomas, 1642?-1962: The Libertine (1676). Cambridge , 1997. Web.
