Don Juan

Overview

About ninety pages, Molière’s comedy, first performed in 1665, the one play of his not written in verse. Don Juan, a nobleman who takes any woman he wants and believes in nothing but arithmetic, abandons his new wife Elvire and moves from seduction to seduction with his servant Sganarelle protesting behind him.

He mocks a beggar’s faith, cheats a creditor, rejects his father’s pleas and finally adopts hypocrisy as a strategy. In a cemetery he invites the stone statue of a man he killed to dinner; the statue accepts, returns the invitation, and drags him down to hell. The play was withdrawn after fifteen performances and not printed in full until after Molière’s death.

What happens

Don Juan’s arithmetic-grounded atheism. Don Juan, a nobleman who takes any woman he wants, believes in nothing but arithmetic, a specific philosophical atheism grounding his seductions and cruelty in a coherent worldview rather than mere uncontrolled appetite.

Abandoning Elvire. Don Juan abandons his new wife Elvire and moves from seduction to seduction, with his servant Sganarelle protesting behind him throughout, a moral commentary the play never lets Don Juan’s actions escape entirely.

Mocking the beggar’s faith. Don Juan mocks a beggar’s religious faith, offering him money to blaspheme, one of several escalating cruelties toward ordinary people that mark his progress through the play’s central action.

Cheating the creditor and rejecting his father. Don Juan cheats a creditor and rejects his own father’s pleas for reform, extending his cruelty from strangers to his own family, refusing even filial obligation’s minimal claims on him.

Adopting hypocrisy as strategy. Don Juan finally adopts hypocrisy as a calculated strategy rather than experiencing any genuine change of heart, anticipating Molière’s later, more extended treatment of performed piety in Tartuffe.

The stone statue’s dinner invitation. In a cemetery, Don Juan invites the stone statue of a man he killed to dinner; the statue accepts, returns the invitation, and drags him down to hell, supernatural justice finally intervening.

How to read it

Read Don Juan’s arithmetic-grounded atheism as a specific, chillingly modern formulation rather than vague impiety; this grounds his seduction and cruelty in a coherent considered worldview, making him a genuinely philosophical libertine rather than simple stock villain.

Pay close attention to how the late turn to hypocrisy, rather than any change of heart, anticipates Tartuffe’s more extended treatment of religious hypocrisy; Molière was already thinking about performed piety as social weapon before that later, more famous controversy.

Notice how the stone statue’s acceptance of Don Juan’s mocking invitation, and its own return invitation dragging him to hell, stages supernatural justice intervening directly where merely human consequence had repeatedly failed to check him.

Consider the play’s suppression after fifteen performances, and its incomplete printing until after Molière’s death, as testimony to how dangerous contemporaries found its combination of religious skepticism and unpunished aristocratic cruelty toward ordinary people.

Read this play alongside Molière’s own later Tartuffe to compare two extended treatments of religious hypocrisy, one grounded in an atheist nobleman’s late strategic turn, the other in a false devotee’s sustained deception of a credulous household.

Questions it raises

• Does grounding Don Juan’s seduction and cruelty in a specific philosophical atheism, belief in nothing but arithmetic, make him more sympathetic as a considered libertine, or does this philosophical grounding make his cruelty toward Elvire and others more disturbing rather than less?
• How does Don Juan’s late turn to hypocrisy as calculated strategy, rather than genuine change of heart, complicate any straightforward reading of the play’s ending? Does this final deception make his eventual punishment feel more or less deserved?
• What does the stone statue’s supernatural intervention suggest about the play’s own theology? Does divine justice finally succeeding where human consequence had failed represent genuine cosmic order, or does its abruptness feel like a dramatically convenient solution?
• How should a reader weigh the play’s suppression after fifteen performances and incomplete printing until after Molière’s death? Does this censorship history change how we should read the play’s actual content and intentions?
• Given that Sganarelle protests Don Juan’s actions throughout without ever successfully stopping him, what does this servant’s persistent but ineffective moral commentary suggest about the play’s own relationship to conventional morality?
• How does this play’s treatment of hypocrisy relate to Molière’s later, more extended treatment in Tartuffe? Does the earlier, more compressed version in Don Juan offer insights the fuller treatment develops, or do the two plays make genuinely different arguments about religious hypocrisy?