The Deified Courtier: Pagan Spectacles in El burlador de Sevilla

Abstract

This essay looks at pagan disguises utilized in plays and courtly entertainments of the Golden Age, focusing on El burlador de Sevilla. Don Juan and all those who surround him, turn to mythology, pretending to be deities and thus reflecting the theatrical culture of the court where the nobility often assumed such pagan guises. When he metamorphoses himself into Jupiter, don Juan reminds us that this particular guise was common in most European courts of the times were courtiers and kings imagined themselves as abiding in a new Olympus. Don Juan, then, defies society, utilizing the same symbols of power that served to exalt the Habsburgs. Don Juan’s power of metamorphosis is seen most clearly in Tisbea and Isabela who both play the part of Europa to the god/bull.