As a dramatic type Don Juan is essentially the impersonation of the scepticism that results from sensuality, and is thus the complement of Faust, whose scepticism is the result of speculation. In its literary treatment it has received various degrees of intensity. In the hands of the earlier Spanish dramatists it becomes, without their intending it, a solemn and impressive moral beacon, while Byron’s Don Juan is a gay adventurer, with nothing in common with the legendary personage except his name and his libertinism. The first introduction of the story into dramatic literature seems to have been in Lope de Vega’s Money makes the Man, where the incident of a walking statue occurs; but the earliest occasion on which the story was dramatized as a whole was in the Burlador de Sevilla (The Deceiver of Seville) of Gabriel Tellez, who published his secular works under the name Tirso de Molina. The Don Juan of this play is almost heroic in his fearlessness, indulging his cold grim humour without restraint even in the realized presence of the supernatural; but his unrelieved depravity revolts the moral sense. From Spain the drama was soon after 1620 transferred to Italy, where a translation of it was produced at Naples. A few years later it was transferred to Paris, where it was frequently acted, sometimes in the form of a translation of the work of Tellez, and sometimes in more or less free imitations, of which several were produced. A new aspect was given to the character in Molière’s Don Juan, ou le Festin de Pierre (1665), where the hero, though as heartlessly depraved as in the Spanish original, loses some of the sterner elements both of his wickedness and of his humour, and becomes more seductive and more amusing. Into English literature the story was first introduced by Shadwell’s Libertine (1676), a grossly indecent and, from a literary point of view, worthless play. The continued popularity of the legend in the country of its birth is attested by the fact that it has furnished the groundwork for a play— Don Juan Tenorio (1844),—and two poems— El Desafio del Diablo and Un Testigo di Bronce (1845),—by the celebrated poet Zorrilla. During the present century it has also been a favourite subject with French writers of the romantic school, having been dealt with by Dumas the elder, Musset, Levasseur, Mallesille, and others. Its capacity for musical treatment has been tested by two composers of the first rank. Gluck made Don Juan the hero of a ballet, and Mozart’s opera, Don Giovanni, the libretto of which was furnished by Da Ponte, has probably done more to popularize the story in the Molière as distinct from the severer early Spanish form than any other setting, literary or musical, it has ever received.