Celestina: Religious Heritage and Theatrical Vitality

Posted on Mar 5, 2025 in Latin

This document explores the religious heritage and theatrical vitality of the fifteenth-century play, Celestina.

Authors and Themes

The play features profane themes, poetic verses, and a variety of characters. It distinguishes between two main types:

  1. Religious drama: Related to the life of Jesus.
  2. Profane theater: Pieces mocking derision of games, themes of love, and pastoral settings.

Authorship and Publishing

The play’s initial publication occurred in Burgos in 1499, comprising 16 acts. Later editions expanded, including those in 1500 in Toledo and Salamanca. The play, originally titled “Comedy of Calisto and Melibea,” features a preface where the author explains finding papers in Salamanca discussing the evils of love. The first act was anonymous, with the rest attributed to Fernando de Rojas.

A poem with an acrostic verse reveals the author’s name. Five acts were added, known as the Centurio treaty, which set the final text. The title changed to “Tragicomedy of Calisto and Melibea” and was published in the sixteenth century in Alcalá de Henares under the title “La Celestina.”

Genre and Style

The work is dominated by dialogue and action, with a theatrical approach to dialogue. It includes long arguments, monologues, and satirical elements. The play is a humorous comedy, meant to be read in a dramatized form rather than represented. It deals with issues related to seduction and passion, using both educated and vulgar language, colloquialisms, and proverbs.

Structure

  1. Act I: Approach to action.
  2. Acts II-XII: Development of conflicts of the characters.
  3. Acts XIII-XX: Development of the passion of Calisto and Melibea.
  4. Act XXI: Pleberio’s lament.

Style

  • Rich language and alternation of religious and popular language.
  • Calisto and Melibea’s dialogues: Courtly style with worship and parallels, antithesis, and Latinisms.
  • Celestina’s dialogues with servants and pupils: Popular language with sayings, short phrases, and exclamations.

The language relies on rhetoric and popular parlance:

  1. Dialogues: Reveal the character of each character.
  2. Monologues: Reveal the doubts and fears in the minds of the characters.
  3. Asides: The author uses as a way of addressing the reader of comic situations.

Characters

  1. Calisto: Rich by inheritance, lives only for his passion and self-interest. Initially appears as a man who worships his beloved, but once he achieves his purpose, he is portrayed as selfish and capricious.
  2. Melibea: Dominated by society, she has no power or moral restraints when she finally surrenders to love. She uses lies to cover up her love and undergoes a transformation from naive to secure.
  3. Pleberio: Enriched merchant, Melibea’s father, concerned about her education. He is attentive and affectionate with Melibea, trying to console and cheer her after the death of Calisto and mourns his death, showing an intense personal relationship with his daughter.
  4. Alisa: Melibea’s mother, whose only interest is to please and obey her husband. She is proud of her social position and believes that only an authoritarian character is needed for Melibea to accept everything she commands.
  5. Celestina: The central character in the play, who unites the characters, noted for her intelligence, many trades, and manipulation. She is lying and plans the steps that will lead to greed and death.
  6. Criados (Servants):
    1. Sempronio: Calisto’s servant, greedy and materialistic, practicing a double play with his master.
    2. Pármeno: Faithful servant who tries to make Calisto see the indignity of Celestina’s workings.
    3. Elisia and Areúsa: Celestina’s pupils. Elisia seeks to capitalize on her beauty and youth, compared to Areúsa, who is convinced that all people are equal and that works, not blood, make a virtuous person.

Topics

The play explores themes of love, death, and the transience of life.