El lindo don Diego by Agustín Moreto: read free online & download PDF or EPUB

Don Juan is about to leave Madrid for Granada when his friend Don Tello, with whom he sailed from Mexico to Spain, tells him he is expecting two nephews from Burgos to marry his daughters: Don Mendo will wed Leonor and Don Diego will wed Inés. Don Juan loves Inés and she loves him, but they have kept it secret.

Mosquito, the comic servant, has gone to see the suitors and comes back with a portrait of Don Diego: he got up at five and, between garters, comb, mirror and clothes, it was two in the afternoon, too late to find a Mass. On stage, Don Diego scolds his servants for not setting the mirrors “in the fashion” and swears no woman can look at him without falling in love. Don Mendo, by contrast, is sensible, and Leonor is happy with him.

Inés will not disobey her father, so in a long speech she asks Don Diego to be the one who refuses the marriage; all he understands is that both cousins are jealous over him. Mosquito then hatches a plot: to make him believe that a widowed countess, Don Juan’s cousin, has fallen for him. The real countess is away in Guadalupe, and the part is played by Beatriz, a maid dismissed from the house, who receives Don Diego in the most affected, high-flown language she can find.

The trick works only too well. The lies Don Diego improvises to escape each tight spot stir up jealousy, misunderstandings and sword challenges between Don Juan and Don Mendo, while Don Tello has the wedding ready for that very night.

Moreto wrote at the height of the Spanish Golden Age. El lindo don Diego is a comedy of intrigue of the kind called comedia de figurón: everything turns on a ridiculous character who cannot see himself as others see him, and it is usually considered the most representative example of the type. It has a close forerunner in El Narciso en su opinión by Guillén de Castro.

It is still read because Don Diego never goes out of date: he admires himself in the mirror and explains that “siempre que me veo / me admiro y alabo a Dios” (“whenever I see myself, I marvel and praise God”). The play also mocks the fashions and the convoluted language of the day: Don Diego admits he cannot understand Góngora, and Beatriz wins him with lines like “¿Qué intento os lleva neutral / a mis coturnos cortés?”. Inés and Leonor, for their part, argue well for their right to choose a husband.

Agustín Moreto was born in Madrid in 1618 (he was baptized on 9 April) and died in Toledo on 28 October 1669. He is one of the major playwrights of the Spanish Golden Age, of the so-called school of Calderón; his other best-known comedy, El desdén, con el desdén (Disdain with Disdain, 1654), was imitated by Molière.

He studied at the University of Alcalá, took minor orders and later became a priest, and his plays were in the repertoire of the leading companies of his time. Baltasar Gracián called him “the Spanish Terence”, and in his will he left his goods to the poor.