At home, “The Deceiver of Seville” has never been the most favored of Tirso de Molina’s works. That distinction belongs to “Don Gil in the Green Pantaloons,” perhaps the most strongly marked specimen of an intriguing comedy in the language. Doña Juana, its heroine, a lady of Valladolid, who has been shamefully deserted by her lover, follows him to Madrid, whither he had gone to arrange for himself a more ambitious match. In Madrid, during the fortnight the action lasts, she appears sometimes as a lady named Elvira, and sometimes as a cavalier named Don Gil; but never once, till the last moment, in her own proper person. In these two assumed characters, she confounds all the plans and plots of her faithless lover; makes his new mistress fall in love with her; writes letters to herself, as a cavalier, from herself as a lady; and passes herself off, sometimes for her own lover, and sometimes for other personages merely imaginary. Her family at Valladolid, meantime, are made to believe she is dead; and two cavaliers appearing in Madrid, the one from design and the other by accident, in a green dress like the one she wears, all three are taken to be one and the same individual, and the confusion becomes so unintelligible, that her alarmed lover and her own man-servant--the last of whom had never seen her but in masculine attire at Madrid--are persuaded it is some spirit come among them in the fated green costume, to work out a dire revenge for the wrongs it had suffered in the flesh. At this moment, when the uproar and alarm are at their height, the relations of the parties are detected, and three matches are made instead of the one that had been broken off;--the servant, who had been most frightened, coming in at the instant every thing is settled, with his hat stuck full of tapers and his clothes covered with pictures of saints, and crying out, as he scatters holy water in every body’s face,-- Who prays, who prays for my master’s poor soul,-- His soul now suffering purgatory’s pains Within those selfsame pantaloons of green? And when his mistress turns suddenly round and asks him if he is mad, the servant, horror-struck at seeing a lady, instead of a cavalier, with the countenance and voice he at once recognizes, exclaims in horror,-- I do conjure thee by the wounds--of all Who suffer in the hospital’s worst ward,-- Abrenuntio!--Get thee behind me! _Juana._ Fool! Don’t you see that I am your Don Gil, Alive in body, and in mind most sound?-- That I am talking here with all these friends, And none is frightened but your foolish self? _Servant._ Well, then, what are you, Sir,--a man or woman? Just tell me that. _Juana._ A woman, to be sure.