La Celestina is the name popularly given to the famous Spanish prose dialogue originally published
in 1499 as the Comedia de Calisto y Melibea. The
anonymous first edition consisted of 16 auctos or
acts, but a second edition in 1502 (rechristened a
Tragicomedia) added five more acts between the
original acts 14 and 15, and also revealed (in an
acrostic) the author to be one Fernando de Rojas. A
prefatory letter to the later editions claims that Rojas
discovered the first act and part of the second act,
written by an unknown author, and completed the
text in just two weeks. Rojas, a converted Jew who is
known to have practiced law and who died in 1541,
was apparently a law student at the University of
Salamanca between 1494 and 1502, and scholars believe that the work was intended for reading aloud
to students at the university (a custom of the time).
The first reading of the original 16-act version of the
text is believed to have taken place in 1497.
The text tells the story of the noble youth Calisto who, pursuing a hawk, enters the garden of a
Jew named Pleberio. There he meets and falls in
love with the Jew’s beautiful daughter Melibea, but
she rebuffs him. Calisto’s unsavory servant Sempronio suggests that his master employ the services
of an aged bawd, La Celestina, who is practiced in
all the arts of seduction and will be able to win the
girl’s love for Calisto. After a complex dialogue,
the devious Celestine is able to persuade the virtuous Melibea to answer Calisto’s suit.
The grateful Calisto pays Celestina in cash and
a gold necklace. But when the wicked Sempronio
and his fellow servant Pármeno hear of this, they
decide they deserve a share of the profit. They
await Celestina at her hut near the river, along with
their whores, Celestina’s friends Elicia and Areusa,
but when Celestina returns home, she refuses to
share her fee and is stabbed to death by the two
servants. Apprehended by the authorities, Sempronio and Pármeno are hanged the following day.
In the first version of the text, these events are
followed by Calisto’s tryst with Melibea in her garden, where he successfully seduces her but is killed
when he falls from the garden’s high wall. The
lamenting Melibea responds by throwing herself
from a tower, and the dialogue ends with Melibea’s
grieving parents, Pleberio and Alissa, responding
with moral sentiments to their daughter’s death
and dishonor.
In the revised, 21-act version of the story, a
new character is introduced after act 14. Centurio, a miles gloriosus or “braggart soldier” character, is persuaded by the harlots Elicia and Areusa
to help them avenge Celestina and their lovers
Sempronio and Pármeno on Calisto, whom they
blame for the deaths. Calisto has not died but
continues to visit Melibea for several weeks after
their first time together, and thus Centurio is able
to set a trap for Calisto at Melibea’s house. When
Calisto is within, Centurio’s gang attacks Calisto’s
followers awaiting him outside, and when Calisto
rushes to aid his friends, he falls from his ladder
and dies. The final acts follow the plot of the earlier version.
Rojas’s chief sources for his text seem to have
been the medieval Spanish writers Juan RUIZ and
Martínez de Toledo, but he clearly also used the
Bible, Homer, Virgil, PETRARCH, and the Roman
playwrights Plautus (the source of the miles gloriosus) and Terence (from whom he seems to have
borrowed the device of the servants’ love affairs
paralleling the protagonists’). The book contains
scenes of frank sexuality, verbal obscenity, and
thinly veiled social criticism that seem not to have
run afoul of the authorities. In fact, its huge popularity led to the printing of 63 editions in Spain in
the 16th century alone. In addition, translations of
La Celestina, as it came to be known after its most
popular character, were made into Italian in 1506,
German in 1520, French in 1527, and English before 1530. Further, there were six different sequels
to the book published in 16th century Spain. La
Celestina proved inspirational and profoundly influential on other Spanish writers, including Cervantes and Lope de Vega, who considered it a
national treasure.
Reasons for the text’s popularity are not hard
to find. The romantic “Romeo and Juliet” love
story appeals to many readers. Others are moved
by Melibea’s grieving parents. Rojas’s brilliant use
of dialogue to explore the complex relationships
and psychological interplay of characters is much
admired by scholars. The realistic, picaresque-type
scenes involving the low-class characters in particular are celebrated for the vivid picture they give of
late 15th-century Spanish society. Further, many
critics have been intrigued by the embittered voice
of social criticism beneath the overt morality of
the text. Written during the decade of grand historical events of Spanish history (the discovery of
the New World, the conquest of Granada, the expulsion of Jews from Spain), La Celestina gives
voice to a great deal of bitterness and alienation—
perhaps giving vent to the disenchantment with
his society Rojas felt as the son of a forced Jewish
convert to Christianity.
But without doubt the largest reason for the
book’s long-lived popularity is the character of Celestina herself. Often called one of the great characters of Spanish (if not European) literature, the
old crone is a fascinating comic embodiment of
evil—a shrewd, hypocritical, malign, and cunning
panderess and sorceress who nevertheless comes
across as completely human.
Bibliography
Cohen, J. M., trans. The Spanish Bawd: La Celestina,
being the tragi-comedy of Calisto and Melibea.
Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin, 1964.
Gilman, Stephen. The Spain of Fernando de Rojas: The
Intellectual and Social Landscape of La Celestina.
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1972.
Severin, Dorothy Sherman, ed. Celestina. With the
translation of James Mabbe (1631). Warminster,
Wiltshire, U.K.: Aris and Phillips, 1987.
———. Tragicomedy and Novelistic Discourse in Celestina. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1989.