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Titles

English title: The Narcissist
Date written: sometime between 1612 and 1615
First publication date: 1625
Keywords: morality > honour, family > brothers/sisters, family > marriage, family > patriarchy, love > friendship, love > desire, love > relationships
Genre and type: comedy

Pitch

This is a play about the limits of self-absorption. It begins with a man so in love with himself he is rarely parted from his beloved mirror, who is thrown into a love quadrangle that can only be resolved through the uncovering of mistaken identities, last-minute appearances and narrow escapes. However, in contrast to many comedia happy endings, in this play the Narcissist ultimately ends up alone.

Synopsis

Don Pedro has given his daughter Brianda the choice to marry one of her two cousins: Don Gutierre, a fully-fledged narcissist, or Don Gonzalo, who is in love with Gutierre’s sister, Mencía. The problem is that Brianda already has a lover, the Marquis, who her father considers undesirable as a son-in-law because his superior lineage will overshadow that of Pedro. In order to sway her self-absorbed suitor Gutierre away from Brianda, the Marquis contrives to have the serving maid, Lucía, impersonate his beautiful sister, Inés, who instantly captures Gutierre’s flighty heart. Gonzalo is mistakenly informed that his Mencía is marrying the Marquis, so when Gutierre rejects Pedro’s offer of marriage to Brianda and turns to Gonzalo, he accepts, throwing Mencía into a rage. The confusion almost comes to blows and swordfighting, but it is dispelled just in time, and the Marquis and Gonzalo agree to help each other win their lovers. Gutierre, meanwhile, barges in on his ‘Inés’, and discovers her embracing the gracioso (comic servant), Tadeo. The inter-class love affair he believes he is watching causes him disgust and confusion. Reassured through the lackey’s quick-witted excuses, Gutierre is placated and, in the end, Don Pedro allows the Marquis to marry Brianda.  This only happens after the Marquis has made some extraordinary offers, such as taking Pedro’s name and title instead of Brianda taking that of the Marquis, or preserving Pedro’s heritage through its assignment to his second-born son.  Gonzalo is also allowed to marry his Mencía, and Lucía and Tadeo try to escape but are caught; when their true identities revealed, they are married. The Narcissist, Gutierre, does not marry the ‘real’ Inés as may be expected from her eleventh-hour appearance in the play, but it is no surprise that he ends up alone, married to himself, his one  real true love. At the close of the play, one wonders if the true narcissist in the play isn’t Don Pedro, who was cruelly willing to marry his daughter to someone she did not love, all in order to preserve his own legacy and fame. (less)

Don Pedro has given his daughter Brianda the choice to marry one of her two cousins: Don Gutierre, a fully-fledged narcissist, or Don Gonzalo, who is in love with Gutierre’s sister, Men... (Read more...)

Critical response

García Lorenzo is right to describe the dramatic action in this play as ‘casi nula’ (almost nonexistent), as the plot revolves around a great deal of chat and one entertaining but perennially stupid ‘Narcissus’ (1976: 195). He devotes a section of his book on Castro to this play, so readers of Spanish can explore the Narcissus theme and García Lorenzo’s comparisons of sections of the play with Calderón’s La vida es sueño and the play’s relationship with Augustín Moreto’s work El lindo Don Diego (Parte V de comedias escogidas ... Madrid, 1653), which was clearly based on Castro’s El narciso en su opinión (1976: 193-205).  For more on the two similar works, see Ebersole’s introduction to his edition of the two plays published together as El Narciso en su opinión y El lindo Don Diego (1968). See also Cortés’s Prologue to Moreto, Teatro (1966: xv) for a conflicting view, because García Lorenzo does not think the differences between the two works are as great as Cortés claims (1976: 202). More recently, Harry Vélez-Quiñones has compared the play with Lope de Vega’s El caballero del Milagro (2000).

• Castro, Guillén de and de Moreto, Agustín 1968. El narciso en su opinión by Guillén de Castro; El lindo don Diego by Agustín de Moreto, ed. A. V. Ebersole. Madrid, Taurus (in Spanish)

• García Lorenzo, Luciano. 1976. ‘El Narciso en su opinión: Narciso o el deseo de sí mismo’. In El teatro de Guillén de Castro, pp. 193-205. Barcelona, Planeta (in Spanish)

• Vélez-Quiñones, Harry. 2000. ‘Miracles of Performance: Lope de Vega's El Caballero del Milagro and Guillén de Castro's El Narciso en su opinión’, Calíope: Journal of Renaissance and Baroque Hispanic Poetry, 6, 1-2, 71-84

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García Lorenzo is right to describe the dramatic action in this play as ‘casi nula’ (almost nonexistent), as the plot revolves around a great deal of chat and one entertaining but peren... (Read more...)

Editions

• Castro, Guillén de and de Moreto, Agustín 1968. El narciso en su opinión by Guillén de Castro; El lindo don Diego by Agustín de Moreto, ed. A. V. Ebersole. Madrid, Taurus

• Castro, Guillén de. 1625. Segunda Parte de las comedias de Don Guillén de Castro, 4 vols. Valencia, Miguel Sorolla

  This is the first printing of this play.

   

  There are 3 manuscript copies in the Biblioteca Nacional (Bruerton, ‘The Chronology’ 150).

• Castro, Guillén de. 1925-27. El narciso en su opinión. In Obras de Gullén de Castro y Bellvís, ed. Eduardo Juliá Martínez, vol.3, pp. 77-115. Madrid, Real Academia Española, Imprenta de la Revista de Archivos, Bibliotecas y Museos

(less)

• Castro, Guillén de and de Moreto, Agustín 1968. El narciso en su opinión by Guillén de Castro; El lindo don Diego by Agustín de Moreto, ed. A. V. Ebersole. Madrid, Taurus

• Castro, Guill... (Read more...)

Useful readings and websites

• García Lorenzo, Luciano. 1976. ‘El Narciso en su opinión: Narciso o el deseo de sí mismo’. In El teatro de Guillén de Castro, pp. 193-205. Barcelona, Planeta (in Spanish)

• Thacker, Jonathan. 2007. ‘Cervantes, Tirso de Molina, and The First Generation’. In A Companion to Golden Age Theatre, pp. 56-91. Woodbridge, Tamesis

• Vélez-Quiñones, Harry. 2000. ‘Miracles of Performance: Lope de Vega's El Caballero del Milagro and Guillén de Castro's El Narciso en su opinión’, Calíope: Journal of Renaissance and Baroque Hispanic Poetry, 6, 1-2, 71-84

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Entry written by Kathleen Jeffs. Last updated on 4 October 2010.

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