Gaiffe, pp. 305-306.
El delincuente honrado displays almost every characteristic of the drame, including its tendency toward prosaic grandiloquence; but it does not, like so many French drames, glorify the businessman (see Gaiffe, pp. 494, 269). There are two reasons for this: Jovellanos was writing for an audience of magistrates and officials, and the commerce of Seville and Cadiz was largely in foreign hands. See Charles E. Chapman, A History of Spain (New York, 1948), pp. 469-70.
Ángel del Río in Jovellanos, Obras escogidas, I, Ixviii.
Ceán, p. 293. See BAE, XLVI, 8-9.
El delincuente honrado, I.v, 85b (italics mine). L'Esprit des lois was placed on the Index in 1751; it was not translated into Spanish until 1820 (Menéndez y Pelayo, Heterodoxos, III, 248). There is a marked tendency in Jovellanos' readings and sources toward prohibited works; yet those who wish to claim him as an ultra-Catholic have sought support in his attack on «una secta de hombres feroces y blasfemos, [que] buscando sus armas en la naturaleza, se levanta contra el cielo, como los titanes» Oración inaugural a la apertura del Real Instituto Asturiano, (BAE, XLVI, 323a). In these somewhat vague words, Jovellanos seems to attack freethinkers or the French revolutionaries; but it must be remembered that he does so in 1794 and in a public discourse, while El delincuente was written for friends and associates in 1773. Furthermore, while the philosophes may, to us, seem clearly to foreshadow the Revolution and its ultimate anti-Christian position, we cannot always expect a contemporary of events to have on them the same perspective as posterity. Once more, it would be hazardous and capricious to impose dogma, either Catholic or anti-Catholic, on Jovellanos' thinking at a distance of more than a century.
Montesquieu, De L'Esprit des lois (Paris: Garnier, n.d. [1868?]), IV.ii; El delincuente honrado, I.v, 85b, and IV.vi, 95a-b.
Cf. El delincuente, I.v, 85b, with Montesquieu, III, vii.
See Montesquieu, VI.xii.
El delincuente, II.xiv, 89b; cf. Montesquieu, VI.xvii. See also Ceán, p. 15. This reference to the light of «philosophy» should be set against the passage quoted in n. 54 supra.
The performances began in 1774 in the Royal Theaters. Nocedal (1821-85) was impressed by a performance in his childhood, but by 1845 the play was no longer given. Shortly after its composition, it was translated into French, English, and German; and seven editions in Spanish were published by 1840. See Sempere y Guarinos, III, 134-35; BAE, XLVI, xi, 77; Alcalá Galiano, pp. 377-78; Somoza, pp. 60-61.