Tirso de Molina in the context of "Lope de Vega"

Spanish Baroque literature is the literature written in Spain during the Baroque, which occurred during the 17th century in which prose writers such as Baltasar Gracián and Francisco de Quevedo, playwrights such as Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina, Calderón de la Barca and Juan Ruiz de Alarcón, or the poetic production of the aforementioned Francisco de Quevedo, Lope de Vega and Luis de Góngora reached their zenith. Spanish Baroque literature is a period of writing which begins approximately with the first works of Luis de Góngora and Lope de Vega, in the 1580s, and continues into the late 17th century.

The fundamental characteristics of Spanish Baroque literature are the progressive complexity in formal resources and a theme centered on the concern for the passage of time and the loss of confidence in the Neoplatonic ideals of the Renaissance. Likewise, the variety and diversity in the subjects dealt with, the attention to detail and the desire to attract a wide audience, of which the rise of the Lope de Vega comedies are an example. From the dominant sensual concern in the 16th century, there was an emphasis on moral values and didactics, where two currents converge: Neostoicism and Neoepicureism. El Criticón from Baltasar Gracián is a point of arrival in the baroque reflection on man and the world, the awareness of disappointment, a vital pessimism and a general crisis of values.

The Trickster of Seville and the Stone Guest (Spanish: El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra) is a play traditionally attributed to Tirso de Molina, although several scholars now attribute it to Andrés de Claramonte. Its title varies according to the English translation, and it has also been published under the titles The Seducer of Seville and the Stone Guest and The Playboy of Seville and the Stone Guest. The play was first published in Spain around 1630, though it may have been performed as early as 1616. Set in the 14th century, the play is the earliest fully developed dramatisation of the Don Juan legend.

Don Juan (Spanish: [doŋ ˈxwan]), also known as Don Giovanni (Italian), is a legendary fictional Spanish libertine who devotes his life to seducing women.

The original version of the story of Don Juan appears in the 1630 play El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra (The Trickster of Seville and the Stone Guest) by Tirso de Molina. The play includes most of the elements found and later adapted in subsequent works, including the setting (Seville), the characters (Don Juan, his servant, his love interest, and her father, whom he kills), moralistic themes (honor, violence and seduction, vice and retribution), and the dramatic ending in which Don Juan dines with and is then dragged down to hell by the stone statue of the father he had previously slain. Tirso de Molina's play was subsequently adapted into numerous plays and poems, of which the most famous include a 1665 play, Dom Juan, by Molière; a 1787 opera, Don Giovanni, with music by Mozart and a libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte largely adapting Tirso de Molina's play; a satirical and epic poem, Don Juan, by Lord Byron; and Don Juan Tenorio, a romantic play by José Zorrilla.

Don Giovanni (Italian pronunciation: [ˈdɔn dʒoˈvanni]; K. 527; full title: Il dissoluto punito, ossia il Don Giovanni, literally The Rake Punished, or Don Giovanni) is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. Its subject is a centuries-old Spanish legend about a libertine as told by playwright Tirso de Molina in his 1630 play El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra. It is a dramma giocoso blending comedy, melodrama and supernatural elements (although the composer entered it into his catalogue simply as opera buffa). It was premiered by the Prague Italian opera at the National Theatre (of Bohemia), now called the Estates Theatre, on 29 October 1787. Don Giovanni is regarded as one of the greatest operas of all time and has proved a fruitful subject for commentary in its own right; critic Fiona Maddocks has described it as one of Mozart's "trio of masterpieces with librettos by Da Ponte".

The Barber of Seville or the Useless Precaution (French: Le Barbier de Séville ou la Précaution inutile) is a French play by Pierre Beaumarchais, with original music by Antoine-Laurent Baudron. It was initially conceived as an opéra comique, and was rejected as such in 1772 by the Comédie-Italienne. The play as it is now known was written in 1773, but, due to legal and political problems of the author, it was not performed until February 23, 1775, at the Comédie-Française in the Tuileries. It is the first play in a trilogy of which the other constituents are The Marriage of Figaro and The Guilty Mother.

Though the play was poorly received at first, Beaumarchais worked some fast editing of the script, turning it into a roaring success after three days. The play's title might be a pun on Tirso de Molina's earlier play El Burlador de Sevilla (The Trickster of Seville).

Dom Juan ou le Festin de Pierre ("Don Juan or The Feast of Stone") is a five-act 1665 comedy by Molière based upon the Spanish legend of Don Juan Tenorio. The aristocrat Dom Juan is a rake who seduces, marries, and abandons Elvira, discarded as just another romantic conquest. Later, he invites to dinner the statue of a man whom he recently had murdered; the statue accepts and reciprocates Dom Juan's invitation. In the course of their second evening, the stone statue of the murdered man charms, deceives, and leads Dom Juan to Hell.

Molière's comedy derives from the Spanish play The Trickster of Seville and the Stone Guest (1630), by Tirso de Molina, but each playwright presents a different interpretation of the libertine protagonist. Molière's Dom Juan is a French man who admits to being an atheist and a free-thinker; whereas, de Molina's Don Juan is a Spanish man who admits to being Catholic, and believes that repentance for and forgiveness of sin are possibilities that will admit him to Heaven, but death arrives early, and thwarts his avoiding moral responsibility for a dissolute life; in both the Spanish and the French versions of the comedy, Dom Juan goes to Hell.

Don Juan Tenorio: Drama religioso-fantástico en dos partes (Don Juan Tenorio: Religious-Fantasy Drama in Two Parts) is a play written by José Zorrilla and produced in 1844. It is the most romantic of the two principal Spanish-language literary interpretations of the legend of Don Juan. The other is the 1630 El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra (The Trickster of Seville and the Guest of Stone), which is attributed to Tirso de Molina. Don Juan Tenorio owes a great deal to this earlier version, as recognized by Zorrilla himself in 1880 in his Recuerdos del tiempo viejo (Memories of the Old Times), although the author confuses de Molina with another writer of the same era, Agustín Moreto.