Don Juan (or Don Giovanni) is a legendary fictional libertine, whose story has been told many times by different authors. El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra , is a play by Tirso de Molina, published in Spain around 1630 , and set in the 14th century. Evidence suggests it to be the first written version of the Don Juan legend. The other main work in Spanish literature about this character is "Don Juan Tenorio", a play written in 1844 by José Zorrilla.
The name is sometimes used figuratively, as a synonym for "womaniser", especially in Spanish slang.
In the legend, Don Juan is a roguish libertine who takes great pleasure in seducing women and (in most versions) enjoys fighting their champions. The main force of the legend revolves around his either raping or seducing a young woman of noble family, and killing her father. Later, he encounters a statue of the father in a cemetery and impiously invites it home to dine with him, an invitation the statue gladly accepts. The ghost of the father arrives for dinner and in turn invites Don Juan to dine with him in the cemetery. Don Juan accepts and goes to the grave where the statue asks to shake Don Juan's hand. When he extends his arm, the statue grabs him and drags him away to Hell.
Moreover, according to Harold Bloom, the Edmund character in King Lear, by William Shakespeare, anticipates the Don Juan archetype by a few decades, while intellectual philosopher Albert Camus represents Don Juan as an archetypical absurd man in the essay The Myth of Sisyphus (1942). In Philippine literature, Don Juan is the protagonist of the Ibong Adarna story, who, though portrayed in a good light, is known to have a weakness for beautiful women and tends to womanizing, having at least two simultaneous relationships (Doña Maria, Doña Leonora, Doña Juana). George Bernard Shaw's play Man and Superman also is a Don Juan play; described by Shaw in its preface.