[542] There are some details in this part of Lope’s play, such as the mention of a walking stone statue, which leave no doubt in my mind that Tirso de Molina used it. Lope’s play is in the twenty-fourth volume of his Comedias (Zaragoza, 1632); but it is one of his dramas that have continued to be reprinted and read. This conception of the character is picturesque, notwithstanding the moral atrocities it involves. It was, therefore, soon carried to Naples, and from Naples to Paris, where the Italian actors took possession of it. The piece thus produced, which was little more than an Italian translation of Tirso’s, had great success in 1656 on the boards of that company, then very fashionable at the French court. Two or three French translations followed, and in 1665 Molière brought out his “Festin de Pierre,” in which, taking not only the incidents of Tirso, but often his dialogue, he made the real Spanish fiction known to Europe as it had not been known before.[543] From this time, the strange and wild character conceived by the Spanish poet has gone through the world under the name of Don Juan, followed by a reluctant and shuddering interest, that at once marks what is most peculiar in its conception, and confounds all theories of dramatic interest. Zamora, a writer of the next half-century in Spain, Thomas Corneille in France, and Lord Byron in England, are the prominent poets to whom it is most indebted for its fame; though perhaps the genius of Mozart has done more than any or all of them to reconcile the refined and elegant to its dark and disgusting horrors.[544] [543] For the way in which this truly Spanish fiction was spread through Italy to France, and then, by means of Molière, throughout the rest of Europe, see Parfaicts, “Histoire du Théatre François” (Paris, 12mo, Tom. VIII., 1746, p. 255; Tom. IX., 1746, pp. 3 and 343; and Tom. X., 1747, p. 420); and Cailhava, “Art de la Comédie” (Paris, 1786, 8vo, Tom. II. p. 175). Shadwell’s “Libertine” (1676) is substantially the same story, with added atrocities; and, if I mistake not, is the foundation of the short drama which has often been acted on the American stage. Shadwell’s own play is too gross to be tolerated anywhere now-a-days, and besides has no literary merit. [544] That the popularity of the mere fiction of Don Juan has been preserved in Spain may be seen from the many recent versions of it; and especially from the two plays of “Don Juan Tenorio,” by Zorrilla, (1844), and his two poems, “El Desafío del Diablo,” and “Un Testigo de Bronce,” (1845), hardly less dramatic than the plays that had preceded them.