Don Juan

Fictional character famous as a heartless womanizer but also noted for his charm and courage. In Spanish legend, Don Juan was a licentious rogue who seduced a young girl of noble family and killed her father. Coming across a stone effigy of the father in a cemetery, he invited it home to dine with him, and the ghost of the father arrived for dinner as the harbinger of Don Juan's death. The legend of Don Juan was first written down by Tirso de Molina, who gave it an original twist in his tragedy The Seducer of Seville (1630). The story was subsequently taken up by many other artists including W.A. Mozart, in the opera Don Giovanni (1787); Molière and George Bernard Shaw, in plays; and Lord Byron in his long satiric poem Don Juan (1819–24).