Don Juan

Don Juan

By Lord Byron.

Table of Contents

1. Titlepage
2. Imprint
3. Introduction
4. Preface to Cantos VI, VII, and VIII
5. Epigraph
6. Fragment on the Back of the MS. of Canto I
7. Dedication
8. Don Juan
   1. Canto I
   2. Canto II
   3. Canto III
   4. Canto IV
   5. Canto V
   6. Canto VI
   7. Canto VII
   8. Canto VIII
   9. Canto IX
   10. Canto X
   11. Canto XI
   12. Canto XII
   13. Canto XIII
   14. Canto XIV
   15. Canto XV
   16. Canto XVI
   17. Canto XVII
9. Endnotes
10. Colophon
11. Uncopyright

Imprint

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Introduction

Byron was a rapid as well as a voluminous writer. His Tales were thrown off at lightning speed, and even his dramas were thought out and worked through with unhesitating energy and rapid achievement. Nevertheless, the composition of his two great poems was all but coextensive with his poetical life. He began the first canto of Childe Harold in the autumn of 1809, and he did not complete the fourth canto till the spring of 1818. He began the first canto of Don Juan in the autumn of 1818, and he was still at work on a seventeenth canto in the spring of 1823. Both poems were issued in parts, and with long intervals of unequal duration between the parts; but the same result was brought about by different causes and produced a dissimilar effect. Childe Harold consists of three distinct poems descriptive of three successive travels or journeys in foreign lands. The adventures of the hero are but the pretext for the shifting of the diorama; whereas in Don Juan the story is continuous, and the scenery is exhibited as a background for the dramatic evolution of the personality of the hero. Childe Harold came out at intervals, because there were periods when the author was stationary; but the interruptions in the composition and publication of Don Juan were due to the disapproval and discouragement of friends, and the very natural hesitation and procrastination of the publisher. Canto I was written in September, 1818; Canto II in December-January, 1818⁠–⁠1819. Both cantos were published on July 15, 1819. Cantos III, IV were written in the winter of 1819⁠–⁠1820; Canto V, after an interval of nine months, in October-November, 1820, but the publication of Cantos III, IV, V was delayed till August 8, 1821. The next interval was longer still, but it was the last. In June, 1822, Byron began to work at a sixth, and by the end of March, 1823, he had completed a sixteenth canto. But the publication of these later cantos, which had been declined by Murray, and were finally entrusted to John Hunt, was spread over a period of several months. Cantos VI, VII, VIII, with a Preface, were published July 15; Cantos IX, X, XI, August 29; Cantos XII, XIII, XIV, December 17, 1823; and, finally, Cantos XV, XVI, March 26, 1824. The composition of Don Juan, considered as a whole, synchronized with the composition of all the dramas (except Manfred) and the following poems: The Prophecy of Dante, (the translation of) The Morgante Maggiore, The Vision of Judgment, The Age of Bronze, and The Island.

There is little to be said with regard to the “Sources” of Don Juan. Frere’s Whistlecraft had suggested Beppo, and, at the same time, had prompted and provoked a sympathetic study of Frere’s Italian models, Berni and Pulci (see “Introduction to Beppo,” Poetical Works, 1901, IV 155⁠–⁠158; and “Introduction to The Morgante Maggiore” ibid., pp. 279⁠–⁠281); and, again, the success of Beppo, and, still more, a sense of inspiration and the conviction that he had found the path to excellence, suggested another essay of the ottava rima, a humorous poem “à la Beppo” on a larger and more important scale. If Byron possessed more than a superficial knowledge of the legendary “Don Juan,” he was irresponsive and unimpressed. He speaks (letter to Murray, February 16, 1821) of “the Spanish tradition;” but there is nothing to show that he had read or heard of Tirso de Molina’s (Gabriel Tellez) El Burlador de Sevilla y Convidado de Piedra (The Deceiver of Seville and the Stone Guest), 1626, which dramatized the “ower true tale” of the actual Don Juan Tenorio; or that he was acquainted with any of the Italian (e.g. Convitato di Pietra, del Dottor Giacinto Andrea Cicognini, Fiorentino [see L. Allacci Dramaturgia, 1755, 4º, p. 862])