Release date is 2025-11-14

Produced by Ramón Pajares Box. (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.)

"Muérete ¡y verás...!" by Manuel Bretón de los Herreros is a stage comedy written in the mid-19th century. The play satirizes social hypocrisy, romantic fickleness, and political posturing in Zaragoza during the Carlist conflicts, using a “death” to strip characters of their masks. It centers on Don Pablo, a militia officer believed fallen in battle; Jacinta, his dazzling beloved; Isabel, her modest, secretly devoted sister; Don Matías, an eager rival; Don Froilán, a gloomy egoist; and Don Elías, a penny-wise lender. Expect witty clashes, farcical reversals, and a sharp portrait of a society that praises the dead while failing the living.

The opening of the play sets Zaragoza humming as a militia column marches out: Pablo scrambles for a loan from Elías, then exchanges fervent vows with Jacinta while Isabel hides her love in silence and Froilán mutters dire omens. Soon a victory is rumored; a letter from Matías and an official notice mention one officer fallen, and Matías arrives to assert Pablo has died. Jacinta mourns yet swiftly lets Matías court her—claiming Pablo would have wished it—while Isabel, at last speaking, declares her deep, self-denying love and rebukes her sister’s haste. As funeral bells toll across from a lively dance where Jacinta and Matías plot their betrothal and Froilán shirks mourning, Pablo returns incognito, overhears his own praises and their betrayal, and decides to make Froilán recant publicly and to devise a sharper private revenge. The excerpt closes with Elías fretting over his unpaid loan as mourners drift from the church. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Originally published: Madrid: Imprenta de Yenes, 1840