Condenado por Desconfiado

The Spanish Golden Age play I attended today deserves its own place of honor. It was tragic.

Let´s see, brief summary of the plot:
Priest spends 10 years in the desert praying and sacrificing. The devil keeps trying to sway him, with no luck. The devil decides to masquerade as an angel and appears to the priest, telling him that after death, he will share the same fate as a man in the neighboring town, Enrico. Whether Enrico goes to Heaven or to Hell, the priest will do the same.
The priest and his comic-relief servant travel to the town and observe Enrico, who turns out to be a murderer, thief, and horrendous villain. The priest decides that since Enrico is obviously going to Hell he must be too, and he sets out to be even worse than Enrico. Of course, this means that he is not trusting God´s mercy and ability to save any soul, no matter how terrible.

Throw in a random wise shepherd boy, Enrico´s attempted marriage, subplots about filial loyalty and jail, and some singing, and you get the following: the Devil wins and gets the priest´s soul while Enrico goes to Heaven after converting. Just lovely.

Moral of the story? Never take Cathy to a warm theater if the play is in a foreign language. She slept through the whole thing. Not a bad idea.