Juan

Dom Juan is the title character in Molière’s play, Dom Juan or the Feast with the Statue, first performed in 1665. It is one of the many treatments of the character of old Spanish legend who is a serial womanizer. In Moliere’s play, Dom Juan is representative of the individual who rails against the moralistic restraints of society (read “the church”), and as such, it was pulled off the stage and only reproduced in a very white-washed version all the way up to 1947, when the original was revived. Throughout the play, Dom Juan runs from one dramatic scene to another, during which he pursues women, abandons them, and defends himself against their aggrieved relatives. His father must bail him out repeatedly – and does so. His valet, Sganarelle, reproaches him constantly over his sinful ways – and stays with him. So loyalty, along with love, are virtues that Dom Juan attracts to himself. He finally comes to his doom at the hands of the ghostly statue of the father of one of his dalliances. Juan is condemned to the fiery pits of hell, and so morals triumph, but not until a whole lot of wickedness has gone down!

Don Juan is George Gordon, Lord Byron’s poetic treatment of the legend, the first two cantos of which were published in 1819. Here Don Juan is seen more as sinned against than sinner, being at the mercy of women who seduce him; nonetheless, he, poor fellow, falls sway. After an affair in his sixteenth year with a young married woman, Don Juan sets off on a long, meandering voyage, encountering madness and mayhem, and of course, love, wherever he sets down. After being shipwrecked, he is rescued on a Greek island by the beautiful young Haidee. Their romance ends disastrously, and Juan is sold as a slave in Constantinople. Here, too, he is loved by the sultana, but her jealousy scares him off, and he runs away to join the Russian Army and ends up in the court of Catherine the Great. She, too – well – you get the picture. Catherine sends him on a diplomatic mission to England, where he wanders among British society, mocking their false morality and their bad taste. In England he meets Aurora Raby – a (gasp) Roman Catholic, who is pious and good, and in love with our hero as well. No doubt if Byron had not met such an early death, Don Juan would have continued his on picaresque journey – perhaps eventually to America, where, no doubt, he would be made President and have his choice of the loveliest ladies of the land.

Leila is a character in Lord Byron’s classic poem, Don Juan, begun in 1819. During his many adventurous voyages, Don Juan rescues this ten year old Muslim orphan girl from the Cossacks, and sees to her well-being as if she were his own. Although she is young and female at a time that does not make many allowances for either, Leila is formidable in her own sense of self. She resolutely refuses to convert to Christianity and maintains her dignified individuality against all odds.