The Symbolism of Peribáñez

One cannot talk or write today about Peribanez y el Comendador de Ocana without acknowledging an inestimable debt to the perceptive study by Professor E. M. Wilson, a study which, far more than any other, has deepened our understanding of the play. The present writer therefore accepts as proven almost everything he has argued, and in particular his conclusion that the main moral purpose of the play is the exemplification of discrecion. Indeed, all the various and complex symbols which Lope uses in Peribanez serve to elucidate that purpose, to characterize the imprudent atrevimiento of don Fadrique and contrast with it the circum-spection, the rightmindedness, the ‘adaptation to environment’ of Peri-banez, Casilda and the other ‘positive’ characters

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