Harlan: Moreto’s “El desden” 
99 
argument follows that El desden con el desden, being a better 
play in every way than El poder de la amistad, using a situa- 
tion also found in the latter play and developing it to a degree 
of perfection found in few plays, with a possibility from the 
date of the plays of having been written after the latter, and 
a strong probability of the same from the internal comparison 
of the two, was influenced by El poder de la amistad. 
The other Moreto play, Yo por vos, y vos por otro, is found 
in the Parte cuarenta y dos de Varios, Madrid, 1676, and the 
Parte tercera de Moreto, Valencia, 1676 and 1703. 183 
Yo por vos, y vos por otro 184: finds Don Inigo de Mendoza and 
Don Enrique de Ribera, friends of the late father of Isabel and 
Margarita, in Madrid where they have come to marry the lat- 
ter, as by arrangement of their father who decided that Mar- 
garita should marry Inigo and Isabel, Enrique. The pictures 
of the ladies have been received _and each man has fallen in 
love with the one he should, but in a discussion between Inigo 
and Enrique as to the relative merits of their own pictures, 
Inigo’s is sent to Isabel and Enrique’s to Margarita and the 
young ladies fall in love according to the pictures, attaching 
the wrong name to each. When the situation is discovered, 
none is willing to give in, and Motril, the lackey, sees a solu- 
tion in having each pretend to love the one who loves him, and, 
furthermore, to play on the temperament of each lady by way 
of making her get over her feeling, giving as the reason for 
not having displayed this sentiment at first, the difference in 
temperaments between themselves and the ones they really love. 
So, altho they pretend that Inigo really loves Isabel and En- 
rique, Margarita, they have decided to leave because of the 
incompatibility of their temperaments. Margarita and Isabel 
decide they are willing to put up with these dispositions, no 
matter what they are. 
In the second act, Motril comes to Margarita pretending to 
be hunting Enrique, and purposely lets drop a paper which 
incriminates Enrique as having about seven lady loves. Motril 
makes sure that she thinks Enrique leads a most dissolute life, 
and when the latter appears and she reviles him, he does not 
183 Barrera, op. cit., p. 278. 
184 Based on the text of the Biblioteca de autores espanoles, Vol. XXXIX, Madrid, 
1873, pp. 373-390. 
