The Other Girl: A Comedy of Errors at the Inn
Act One
Scene I
Don Diego and Simon are at the inn, waiting for Doña Irene and Doña Paquita. Don Diego leaves his room and begins to talk to Simon. He praises Doña Paquita and tells Simon that he has a secret, if he promises not to tell anyone. Simon agrees, eager to hear the news. After a while, Simon realizes he was mistaken, because he thought the plan was for Don Diego to marry Doña Paquita, who is sixteen, to his nephew, Don Carlos. But in reality, Don Diego, though fifty-nine years old, intends to marry Doña Paquita himself. Simon finds this mistake quite amusing, but Don Diego does not.
Scene II
Doña Paquita and her mother, Doña Irene, arrive. Doña Irene sits down to talk with Don Diego and explains that she has taken her daughter from the convent as a farewell. Doña Paquita says the nuns loved her and that her aunt could not stop mourning her departure.
Scene III
Doña Irene tells Don Diego that her whole family has embraced the news of his marriage to her daughter. She also says that Doña Paquita will gladly accept it because she is a well-educated girl and will therefore do what her mother says.
While they talk, Doña Paquita shows her disregard for the arrangements by making some interventions.
This conversation leads Doña Irene to talk about her family, and Doña Paquita insists she wants to leave, but her mother does not give her permission. Doña Paquita bids farewell with a kiss from her mother and a courtesy to Don Diego.
Scene IV
Don Diego tells Doña Irene that he would like to know Doña Paquita’s honest opinion on their wedding, but Doña Irene says that would be improper.
Doña Irene tells Don Diego that she had been talking with her daughter the previous night and had explained the importance of marrying mature men, as she had done by marrying a man of fifty-six, who died seven months after the wedding, and with whom she had a son. She adds that she has had twenty-two children in her three marriages.
Scene V
Simon looks through the rear door and announces that the foreman is waiting for Don Diego. Simon gives Don Diego his stick and hat, as he wants to go for a walk. Don Diego and Doña Irene are going out the next day at six in the morning.
Scene VI
Doña Irene asks Rita if she fed the cowbird, to which she replies yes. She also asks if she has made the beds, and Rita replies that she has made her own and will do the others now.
Doña Irene complains about having to write letters, to which Rita replies that she does not understand the urgency of the mail if they left there only two hours ago.
Scene VII
Calamocha comes to the inn and complains that his room, number three, is full of bugs. He also says that he almost didn’t make it because the horses couldn’t climb to number three.
Scene VIII
Calamocha talks to Rita. He explains that he just arrived with his master, who received the letter as Doña Paquita left Zaragoza for Guadalajara. Once there, they learned that Doña Paquita was gone. They took the horses again and then stopped at the inn to rest and continue the next day.
Rita explains that Doña Irene wrote letters saying they had arranged the marriage of her daughter. Doña Paquita began to feel very sad and decided to advise Calamocha’s master, waiting for him to, if both wanted, prevent the marriage. A few days later, Rita and Doña Irene came to Alcalá to leave the next day.
Then Calamocha leaves and enters Don Carlos’s room.
Scene IX
Doña Paquita and Rita chat. Doña Paquita has cried because she does not want to marry Don Diego. Rita asks if she remembers Don Felix, a love of Doña Paquita’s, and she replies that of course, but surely he already has other loves and certainly has not paid any attention to the letter she wrote to him because of her marriage. Rita tells her that Don Felix, as he received her letter, went to comfort her and is already in Alcalá. She tells her she will warn her of Don Felix’s arrival with a cough.
Rita walks out the door, and Doña Paquita enters Doña Irene’s room.
Act Two
Scene I
Doña Paquita eagerly awaits the arrival of her lover, saying that although she’s young, she knows what love is.
Scene II
Doña Paquita speaks with her mother, who explains why she should marry Don Diego and says that a wedding like that is a rare opportunity. Then, Doña Irene complains that her daughter never has anything to say when they talk about the wedding and Don Diego.
Scene III
Rita comes with candles, and Doña Irene asks about her delay, to which Rita replies that it has taken so long because they had to go buy candles.
Doña Irene asks her to leave one light there and the other in her room and to deliver a letter to Simon for the mail.
Doña Paquita asks Rita if Don Felix has come, and she says he still has not arrived, but he will.
Doña Irene also requests that she bring the thrush later, as it had not let her sleep that night.
Scene IV
Doña Irene praises Don Diego while Doña Paquita shows disregard for his wealth.
Doña Irene says that although she had not taken her daughter out of the convent to marry her to Don Diego, she would have done the same, and she thinks, due to the lack of interest shown by her daughter for Don Diego, that the time spent in the convent has made her want to be a nun.
Doña Paquita promises her mother that she will never leave her and will always obey her, as she cannot lie.
Scene V
Don Diego arrives and sits next to Doña Irene. He explains that he arrived late because he met the president of Manchester and Dr. Padilla, who entertained him.
Don Diego wants to know what Doña Paquita thinks and feels about their wedding, but Doña Irene says that her daughter will obey her commands. In contrast, Don Diego thinks parents in these cases should only advise, suggest, or imply to their children, but never command. Don Diego suggests that if his fiancée had another lover, she should say so, but Doña Irene gets offended and says he has a poor concept of his daughter. Doña Paquita does not give her personal opinion on the subject, and each of her responses is mediated by her mother. Doña Irene tells her daughter that she loves her and that this is for her own good. The three go to Doña Irene’s room, but Rita stops Doña Paquita.
Scene VI
Rita tells Doña Paquita that Don Felix has already come and is climbing the ladder. Doña Paquita asks what she should tell Rita, and Rita tells her that’s a good question and to remember that there isn’t much time. Rita leaves and enters Doña Irene’s room.
Scene VII
Don Carlos arrives, and Doña Paquita tells him to stop the wedding, but then tells her lover to leave for Madrid early the next morning and that she wants to marry him upon arrival. Don Carlos tells her that if tomorrow they go to Madrid, he will also go, but Doña Paquita asks him to stop the marriage without displeasing her mother. Don Carlos tells her to do nothing and that nothing and nobody will separate them.
Scene VIII
Rita arrives and tells Doña Paquita that her mother is asking for her. Don Carlos says that he will be a competitor in the morning and says goodbye to Doña Paquita. Doña Paquita enters her mother’s bedroom.
Scene IX
Calamocha tells Don Carlos what he has prepared for dinner. Rita enters the room, offers soup, and leaves. Calamocha goes to the door and returns to talk with Don Carlos. He says that he doesn’t know who is coming and tells him that it is Simon. Neither knows what Simon is doing there, and Don Carlos gives Calamocha permission to lie to him.
Scene X
Simon enters through the rear door. Calamocha greets Simon, and Don Carlos asks Simon where his love is and what he has been doing. He answers questions evasively or with other questions. At the end, Simon is about to tell them what he is doing there and if his love is with him.
Scene XI
Don Carlos, due to the presence of his uncle, Don Diego, realizes that he is engaged to Doña Paquita.
Don Diego asks his nephew what he is doing there and what he has done, saying that his presence frightened him into thinking he had done something wrong. Don Carlos lies to him, saying that he was only going to Madrid to surprise him with a visit and that his misfortune is to have been found there at the inn, causing him displeasure. Don Diego does not understand how an officer could leave his post with the sole reason of visiting his uncle, but Don Carlos says that as they are in peacetime, he needed to. Don Diego is not quite in agreement with this, so he tells Don Carlos to immediately leave the inn and asks Simon to give him money to pay for his expenses and not to leave until they are gone.
Scene XII
Don Diego gives his nephew money for the trip. He tells him to sleep at the inn and leave the next day at three or four o’clock. He also warns him that he will let him know when to leave and come to Zaragoza. Don Carlos kisses his uncle’s hand and embraces him. Don Diego tells him not to send money, and Don Carlos leaves.
Scene XIII
Don Diego thinks his nephew has agreed very well. Although he knows it is not the same communicating in writing as in person, they are married, and he thinks what’s done is done. He has not told his nephew the story of his marriage for fear that he might be a possible rival, but he cries because he has great affection for him.
Scene XIV
Doña Paquita and Rita leave Doña Irene’s room and, not seeing anyone, think they have already left. Doña Paquita confesses to Rita that her beloved has no fear of anyone or anything, yet she is concerned about the disappointment that Don Diego is going to experience, as he is a good man. Rita goes to make Doña Irene’s room ready for the thrush.
Scene XV
Simon leaves through the door to see Doña Paquita, who tells him that she thought they were lying, and he replies that he still does not know where to go to sleep. Doña Paquita asks about the people who have come, and Simon says no one has gone, but it has been a lieutenant colonel and his assistant who were in that room. Doña Paquita says that she has not seen them.
Scene XVI
Rita comes to find out that Don Carlos is gone. Rita does not understand how she has been deceived and that he had left through the door of the Martyrs, which is the way to Aragon. She enters Don Carlos’s room and checks that there is no luggage. Doña Paquita is unhappy and deluded and thinks that Don Carlos has not gone there to retrieve her, but for some other purpose, and does not understand why he has abandoned her that way.
Act Three
Scene I
Don Diego cannot sleep and goes into Simon’s room, which is totally dark. He wakes him up, and Simon asks what time it is. Don Diego tells him it is three o’clock and that he was waiting for his nephew, who has left as he had promised. Then Don Diego hears three claps and the sound of an instrument. They realize it is a wretched lover who plays a serenade to his beloved. Simon suggests they stick their heads out, but Don Diego says no, he does not want to intrude.
Doña Paquita and Rita come out of their rooms and head toward the window. Simon realizes that the door of that room has opened, and he and Don Diego leave.
Scene II
Doña Paquita realizes that it is her lover and looks out the window. Doña Paquita asks what he is throwing and tells him to pull the letter. He throws it, but she does not catch it and now pursues it. Not finding it, she says there must be no doubt. After, Don Felix urges her to tell him the reasons for leaving it there and to allow them to wed.
Simon runs into the cage and drops the thrush. Rita and Doña Paquita, at the noise, realize that there are people and go to Doña Paquita’s room and, upon retiring, Rita stumbles over Simon.
Scene III
Don Diego asks Simon to locate the letter. Simon finally finds it and tells Don Diego that he has run out of illusions and that Doña Paquita is sixteen and has been raised in a convent and even then is having an affair. Don Diego orders Simon to go down and turn on a light and come up with it instantly.
Scene IV
Don Diego does not know whether to blame Doña Paquita, her mother, or his aunts. He is disappointed that his hopes are gone, feels jealous (although his age was considered unworthy of loving feelings), is embarrassed and angry, and wishes for revenge, but does not know where from. He hears a noise in Doña Paquita’s room and leaves.
Scene V
Rita enters and, thinking that no one is in the room, starts looking for the letter.
Simon arrives suddenly and says they already have light. Don Diego asks Rita what she is doing there and what she is looking for. Rita replies that she had heard a noise and had gone to look at what it was. After, she says the cage fell and it must have been a cat. Rita lights a candle on the table. Then Don Diego asks if Doña Paquita is sleeping, and Rita says yes. Don Diego and Simon enter the room with the light Simon had brought.
Scene VI
Rita enters Doña Paquita’s room and asks if she found the letter. Doña Paquita tells her not to bother looking, that they will find it, and feels even more miserable because Don Diego has heard her at the window with Don Felix.
Doña Paquita tells Rita that her lover told her that in that letter he explained the reasons for his flight, as he saw it would be impossible. Doña Paquita thinks he is a traitor, that when he is left with a competitor, it is because there are many women in the world.
Rita looks into Don Diego’s room and tells Doña Paquita to go and see him, but Doña Paquita does not care, because she has lost him, so she has nothing to fear.
Scene VII
Don Diego talks to Simon in his room and asks him to saddle the horse and, if they have already left, to mount and follow them. Then Don Diego talks to Doña Paquita and asks if she has already called her mother, and she says no.
Scene VIII
Don Diego asks Doña Paquita how she feels and if she has another lover. Doña Paquita tells him that she does not have anyone and that if given the choice to marry whomever she wished, she would not marry anyone, but she also says she has never thought of becoming a nun. Don Diego does not understand her sadness due to marriage, because she considers him a good man, has no love, and is not inclined to the religious state.
Doña Paquita states that she will fulfill her mother’s orders and marry him and then be an honest woman. She also claims that she will never say that she should live her life sad and unhappy.
Don Diego criticizes the education given to women when they are not sincere and do not express their feelings, but simply obey their mothers and, in many cases, live miserable lives. He then asks Doña Paquita to tell her mother that she does not feel that way.
Doña Paquita enters her mother’s room.
Scene IX
Simon arrives and tells Don Diego that as he was leaving, he saw them at the door, they were already on the road, he waved, and they stopped, and when he told Don Carlos that Don Diego ordered them to return, Don Carlos did not say a word.
Simon says he is downstairs waiting to be told to come up. Don Diego sends him up, and Simon says he is going.
Scene X
Don Carlos arrives. Don Diego suggests to his nephew that he already knows about the letter and then asks how he met Doña Paquita, where, and when.
Don Carlos says he met her after returning from Zaragoza and that his mayor forced him to stop in Guadalajara since it was his wife’s birthday. He fell for her instantly, and the mayor came up with the idea of pretending that Don Carlos was Don Felix de Toledo, and to her, he has always been Don Felix. Don Carlos stayed three months in Guadalajara. They wrote letters, and he would visit her every night at the convent, but one day she had to leave, so she said goodbye and left. Until one day he received a letter from his beloved in which she said her mother would force her to marry a rich and much older man. He went to Guadalajara and, not finding her there, went to Alcalá. Don Carlos tells him that he came to Alcalá to comfort her and ask him to intercede for him to stop the wedding and to marry her.
Don Carlos tells his uncle that Doña Paquita, as a good daughter, will marry Don Diego, but her heart will always belong to him, and Don Diego is angry.
Don Carlos is going to leave because it seems that someone is coming, but her uncle forces him to stay. Don Carlos enters his uncle’s room.
Scene XI
While Doña Paquita and Rita collect Doña Irene’s clothes, she speaks with Don Diego. He tells her that her daughter has been in love with another man for a year. Doña Irene cannot believe it because his daughter has been raised in a convent and thinks that Don Diego no longer loves her and wants to get rid of her. Doña Irene begins to mourn because she is poor and if her daughter does not marry Don Diego, she has nothing to live on. Since Doña Irene does not believe her daughter has a lover and continually interrupts Don Diego, he gives Doña Irene the letter Don Carlos wrote to his beloved to read. Doña Irene, without reading the letter, knocks on her room’s door for her daughter to come out and disappoint Don Diego.
Scene XII
Doña Paquita and Rita appear. Doña Irene tells her daughter that Don Diego has been treated in a way that she can no longer endure. Doña Paquita reproaches Don Diego for not having kept his word. Don Diego gives Doña Paquita Don Carlos’s letter. It explains that Don Carlos is not called Don Felix and that Don Diego is his uncle and had asked him to leave immediately. Doña Irene, realizing it’s true that her daughter has a lover, gets very upset and walks toward her daughter as if to kill her.
Scene XIII
Don Carlos comes out to defend Doña Paquita, and her mother is frightened and withdraws. Don Diego tells Doña Irene that this is Doña Paquita’s lover, his nephew. Don Diego forgives his nephew and his love and says that this happened because of the abuse of power parents exert over their daughters to make them marry, and he gives thanks for having realized in time the love between two young people. Doña Irene forgives her daughter and embraces her. Doña Paquita tells Rita that she will always be her friend, and Don Diego says he is no longer afraid to grow old alone, since they are the delight of his heart and that if they have a son, his life should be dedicated to Don Diego and his understanding.
Character Description
The characters in The Other Girl are:
- Don Diego
- Doña Paquita (Doña Francisca)
- Doña Irene
- Don Carlos (Don Felix)
- Rita
- Simon
- Calamocha
Don Diego is the character that drives the action, since he wants to marry Doña Paquita. He is a fifty-nine-year-old man, robust, kind, and wealthy. He is very polite and is Don Carlos’s uncle.
Don Carlos: Don Diego’s nephew, a talented, educated, good soldier, lovable in every way, and who is in love with Doña Paquita. He is a lieutenant colonel in Zaragoza but falls in love with Doña Paquita when stationed in Guadalajara. He is also called Don Felix in some parts of the play, as that is the name he uses with Doña Paquita.
Doña Irene: Doña Paquita’s mother. She is widowed and has already had twenty-two children, and this is the last one remaining. She is a good and honorable woman, but after three marriages, she is poor and tries to marry her daughter to Don Diego, a rich and mature man.
Doña Paquita (Doña Francisca): Doña Irene’s daughter and the woman Don Diego wants to marry. She is sixteen and has been raised for a long time by nuns in a convent in Guadalajara. She is very lively, spontaneous, funny, humble, cute, and very well educated, always obeying her mother. She is in love with Don Carlos and is called Doña Paquita by family and people she trusts.
Rita is Doña Irene’s maid. She is lazy and mischievous but supports Doña Paquita and is her good friend.
Simon is Don Diego’s servant. He is a good, educated, and faithful man.
Calamocha: Don Carlos’s servant. He is a worldly man, a little rushed and scatterbrained. He is friends with Rita.
These characters can be divided into primary: Don Diego, Doña Paquita, Don Carlos, and Doña Irene; and secondary: Rita, Simon, and Calamocha.
Temporal and Spatial Location
Spatial Location
The plot takes place in one place, at an inn in Alcalá de Henares. Within this inn, the action takes place in a hall (the forum, back of the stage) on the first floor. This hall is a large room with a staircase leading to the ground floor of the inn, with a railing to lean on to one side, with a table in the middle, a bench, chairs, etc.
Although the action takes place at the inn, there are allusions to other places and events that happened in those places, for example, the localities of origin and destination of the various characters.
Temporal Location
The linear action can be considered as one day, beginning at seven pm and ending at five o’clock the next morning. However, there are flashbacks, or analepsis, i.e., jumps to the past, such as when in the third act Don Carlos explains how, where, and when he met Doña Paquita.