The son of Don Juan: an original drama in 3 acts inspired by the reading of Ibsen's work entitled 'Gengangere'

In Short

This play is a grim, unflinching examination of hereditary decay. It tells the story of a young, brilliant man named Lazarus, whose father, the aging Don Juan, spent his life in pursuit of hedonism and debauchery. As Lazarus approaches adulthood and a promising marriage, he begins to suffer from nervous instability, eventually realizing his father’s past has condemned him to madness. It has remained a significant work for its raw, uncompromising portrayal of how the sins of the past are physically and psychologically visited upon the next generation.

The Story

The drama centers on the household of Don Juan, a man who, in his twilight years, is a shadow of his former self—broken, ailing, and clinging to the glory of his past as a legendary libertine. He lives with his wife, Dolores, and their son, Lazarus, a gifted young man whom Don Juan boasts of as his greatest triumph. Yet, beneath the surface of this family, a tragedy is unfolding. Lazarus, despite his intellect and creative promise, suffers from terrifying neurological symptoms—vertigo, confusion, and sudden, dark moods—that hint at a profound internal instability.

The plot pivots on the arrival of a physician, Doctor Bermudez, whom the family approaches under the guise of concern for others to uncover the truth about Lazarus’s health. The confrontation between the doctor and the family is devastating. Bermudez confirms their worst fears: Lazarus’s condition is the direct, irreversible consequence of his father’s life of "sediments of pleasure and the dregs of alcohol." The biological reality of heredity acts as a death sentence, turning the "national glory" of a genius into an inevitable descent toward idiocy.

As the realization takes hold, the family structure fractures. Don Juan, initially dismissive and arrogant, is forced to confront the fact that his "son of genius" is actually the primary victim of his own vanity and neglect. Lazarus himself becomes trapped in a cycle of awareness and dissolution. He tries to cling to his plans, his aesthetic theories, and his love for a young woman named Carmen, but the ground beneath him continues to shift. He feels his reason slipping, noting that the "steam of a thousand atmospheres" is being forced into an "old and rusty boiler."

In the final act, the setting moves to the countryside, where the atmosphere grows increasingly suffocating. Lazarus, now fully aware that his mind is fracturing, insists on a final vigil until dawn. He is surrounded by his family and friends, who watch in horror as his personality disintegrates. The tension builds as the night passes, with Lazarus alternating between moments of sharp, painful clarity and bouts of erratic, infantile behavior. As the sun begins to rise over the Guadalquivir, the final, tragic irony is laid bare. Lazarus, staring at the light he can no longer comprehend, begs his mother to give him the sun. His request is not a poetic plea, but the final, hollow cry of a mind that has been completely consumed by darkness.

How It Unfolds

The shadow of the father The drama opens with a vivid contrast between the aging, debauched Don Juan and his brilliant son, Lazarus. While the father reminisces about past orgies and revelries, the son struggles with mysterious, painful physical and mental symptoms.

The diagnostic trap Lazarus and his mother orchestrate a meeting with the physician Bermudez to secretly confirm the nature of his illness. The doctor delivers a chilling, professional verdict: Lazarus is doomed by the biological legacy of his father’s dissipation.

The denial of the past Don Juan struggles to accept the medical reality, clinging to the belief that his son’s genius is his own inheritance. He attempts to mask the truth with bravado, failing to see that his own physical decay is reflected in his son’s mental decline.

The final vigil Lazarus demands that his family and friends stay awake with him through the night as he awaits his inevitable collapse. He becomes increasingly paranoid and detached, sensing that the people around him are conspiring to keep him from his future.

The ultimate shipwreck As dawn breaks, Lazarus reaches his breaking point. He cries out for the sun, and the onlookers—and the reader—realize that the "genius" has completely vanished, leaving behind only the shell of an invalid.

The People

Lazarus is the tragic focal point, a man of immense talent and sensitivity who is essentially hollowed out by his inheritance. He wants to live, to write, and to marry Carmen, but he is trapped by the terrifying knowledge of his own neurological deterioration.

Don Juan is the catalyst of the tragedy, a man who views his life of excess with a strange, detached pride. He is oblivious to the suffering he has caused until the very end, when his vanity is finally shattered by the sight of his son’s destruction.

Dolores is the suffering mother, caught between her husband’s delusions and her son’s reality. She is the only one who truly understands the gravity of the situation, and her desperation to save Lazarus drives much of the play’s emotional intensity.

Bermudez serves as the voice of cold, scientific truth. He enters the story as a respected expert but is quickly overwhelmed by the emotional violence of the family’s situation, eventually becoming a helpless observer of their decline.

Carmen represents the future that Lazarus will never reach. Her devotion to him highlights the cruelty of his fate, as she is forced to watch her partner disappear before her eyes, ultimately separated from him by his total mental eclipse.

In Its Own Voice

"A generation devoured by vice; which bears even in its bones the virus engendered by impure love; with a corrupted blood which in its course drags along organisms of corruption mingled with its ruddy globules, this generation goes on falling and falling into the abysses of idiocy."

This passage from the prologue explains the author's grim view of the hereditary consequences at the heart of the play.

"To put steam of a thousand atmospheres into an old and rusty boiler!"

Lazarus uses this metaphor to describe the agonizing conflict between his intense, burning intellect and the physical weakness of his body.

"Mother—give me the sun!"

These final words, borrowed from Ibsen, mark the tragic conclusion of the play, signifying the final loss of Lazarus’s reason.

What It's Really About

The play is a brutal interrogation of the law of heredity. It challenges the romanticized notion of the "genius" by stripping away the veneer of nobility and showing the biological rot beneath. It asks whether a child is truly an extension of the parent’s best qualities or merely a vessel for their worst, unaddressed sins. Beyond the medical, it is a critique of a society that values the "Don Juan" archetype—the libertine, the duelist, the conqueror—while ignoring the catastrophic, multigenerational cost of that lifestyle. It is an argument that there is no such thing as a private sin; every choice reverberates into the future, eventually finding a victim who never had a say in the matter.

Why Read It Today

Readers who appreciate the dense, psychological intensity of late 19th-century European drama will find much to admire here. It feels like a fever dream—a claustrophobic, high-stakes collision of ego and biology that refuses to offer the reader any comfort. It is not an easy read; the prose is heavy with the melodrama of its era, and the characters often speak in long, agitated monologues that reflect their internal desperation. However, for those interested in the history of the "heredity drama"—and how authors grappled with the early scientific anxieties of their time—it is a compelling piece of work.

It is particularly poignant for anyone interested in the legacy of Ibsen. While the author acknowledges his debt to Ghosts, he takes the premise into a far more sun-drenched, uniquely Spanish register of despair. The transition from the "glory" of the Spanish Golden Age myth to the clinical, pathological horror of the late 1800s creates a unique tone that feels both archaic and strikingly modern. If you can handle the intensity, the way the author drags the reader down with his characters is a feat of dramatic engineering that remains as unsettling today as it was at the turn of the century.