Tragedy and Comedy in the Celestina

Celestina (Burgos, 1499) refers to the work as a comedy.* There is no prologue, no foreword, not even a title in the one remaining copy of what may be called the first edition. Moreover, since only the title-page seems to be lacking, there was scarcely room for anything except a general argument of the play. There is no word of explanation, then, for the fact that a tragedy bore the title of comedy. Such a discrepancy would not have provoked any comment a hundred years later, for comedia in Lope de Vega's time was the generic term for play and included both comedies and tragedies. But in the early days of the Renaissance the distinction between the two concepts was commonly made. It must be said, as Boccaccio said in the face of so many reasons why Dante's work should not have been called a commedia, that nevertheless it was so entitled, and apparently with every conscious intention of the author to do so. It seems likely that a capable young student in the University of Salamanca who had read the comedies of Terence and Plautus and the tragedies of Seneca, and who had had outstanding scholars of Spain and Italy available as his grammar and rhetoric teachers, and who, furthermore, understood the Latin plays well enough to compose an expert drama modelled upon them, could be trusted to have a reasonably clear vision of his materials and to be familiar with the conventional distinctions between tragedy and comedy. At any rate, the earliest extant version of the Celestina was called a comedy. We may conjecture at least two reasons for which the author gave it that title. The second known edition (Sevilla, 1501), also in sixteen acts and likewise called a comedy, is introduced by the following rubric: Here follows the comedy of Calisto and Melibea: composed in reprehension of those madly in love, who, overcome by their unrestrained desires, call their mistresses God and consider

Art · Comedy · Literature · Tragedy (event) · Early Modern Spanish Literature · Medieval Iberian Studies · Spanish Literature and Culture Studies