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The Criminal, the Advocate, and the Judge in 2 Samuel 13 and Tirso’s La venganza de Tamar

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Abstract

This article examines the tragic story of Tamar–the only daughter of King David mentioned by name in the Bible–through a comparison between the passage from 2 Samuel 13 and the play La venganza de Tamar (Tamar’s revenge), by the Spanish playwright and friar Tirso de Molina (1579–1648). Through close-readings of excerpts from both texts, I emphasize the transition of the story from biblical drama to seventeenth century Spanish comedia. Within an intertextual frame, this comparative approach emphasizes the relationship between literature and law by focusing on Amnon’s iter criminis (path of crime); Tamar’s plea for her own integrity; and King David’s duties as public authority. My goal is to explain the way Tirso reconfigures these three biblical characters to present the problem of justice from the points of view of the criminal (Amón), the advocate (Tamar), and the judge (David).

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Notes

  1. For all the biblical citations: Scripture taken from the Modern English Version. Copyright © 2014 by Military Bible Association. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

  2. La venganza de Tamar, by Tirso de Molina, edited by A.K.G. Paterson, Cambridge University Press, Molina 1969.

  3. Higgins refers to ֽלאַ (’al), an adverb used to convey the idea that a certain action must be done.

  4. Amón’s lines allude to characters whose mythical history attributes them a bizarre object of affection. The characters alluded and the supposed objects of fascination are: Arion and the dolphin; King Xerxes and the plane-tree; Pygmalion and the statue; and Queen Semiramis and a horse. Paul Whitworth’s translation of the play into English refers to these characters explicitly. Molina (1999, 44-5).

  5. Antonini (1997) highlights the interest that Tirsian female characters have aroused among contemporary critics, remarking that they possess a "psychological density" that makes them stand out in the context of the Golden Age literature (1997, 229).

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  1. Department of Languages and Cultures, The University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada

    Luigi De Angelis Soriano

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De Angelis Soriano, L. The Criminal, the Advocate, and the Judge in 2 Samuel 13 and Tirso’s La venganza de Tamar. Neophilologus 107, 541–557 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11061-023-09771-y

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