Harlan: Moreto’s (( El desden” 
69 
el desden, there is greater similarity between Ortensia and 
Laura in Lope’s La vengadora de las mujeres than between her 
and Diana. She also is like Lope’s Nise of La dama boba. 
And after that beginning, the action goes on, using jealousy 
of Alfonsa as the keynote for causing Ortensia to go to ex- 
tremes and in the end to compromise herself into marriage 
with Felix, who at no time shows himself to be madly in love 
with her. Ortensia has a great disdain toward men, as have 
Diana and Laura. As soon, however, as she sees someone 
who interests her in spite of herself, she needs only to have 
her jealousy aroused in order to be in the very throes of the 
love that she has hitherto denied and scorned. 
The indifference of Felix towards Ortensia is a passive sort 
and not at all the premeditated, risking-everything, disdainful 
indifference which is the part of Carlos in meeting the dis- 
dain of his beloved. The play is well named. There is a 
turbulence at the very beginning of the play when the ‘Two 
streams” first meet, but after that we do not find any up- 
stream race comparable to the struggle in El desden con el 
desden . The two opposing forces rather are facilitated in 
their down-stream course by the circumstance of Alfonsa’s 
temperament, which allows the idea of jealousy to play the de- 
termining part. 
There is undoubtedly some suggestion of the character of 
Diana in Ortensia, but it is slighter than that found in Laura 
and Nise. More suggestion comes in the title of the play, 
which presupposes a struggle of some sort, which, on closer 
investigation, cannot be compared to the battle of wits which 
takes place in the Moreto play. 
Schaeffer 151 says of this play, after giving a short synopsis : 
Da das Stuck moglicherweise vor Moreto’s El desden con el desden 
geschrieben ist, so darf es schon auf diese Vermuthung hin, als ein 
literargeschichlich interessantes bezeichnet werden. 
The point which Schaeffer makes about the date of the play 
is most pertinent, and inasmuch as it first appeared in 1665, 
whereas El desden con el desden appeared in 1654, it seems 
doubtful, with a difference of eleven years between the two, 
that Moreto ever saw the play before he wrote his. Nor does 
it appear that he wrote any plays in conjunction with D. Juan 
Velez de Guevara. 152 
161 op. cit., Vol. II, p. 154. 
152 Fernandez-Guerra y Orbe, op. cit., p. 47. 
