La Celestina
Pages: 108
|Published: 1 Jan 1499
Description
(Applause Books). "As Greek tragedy," says a Spanish writer, "was composed from the crumbs that fell from Homer's table, so the Spanish drama owed its earliest forms to La Celestina (1499). " Fernando de Rojas' tragi-comedy which has also been called "a novel in dialogue" runs to about three hundred pages in the James Mabbe translation, here adapted to the stage by Eric Bentley in a five-act version. The central and pervasive situation is a simple a dirty old woman is helping a courtly young gentleman to seduce a girl. The wonder of the thing lies in the art with which Fernando do Rojas derives, from such commonplace materials, a towering tragedy or rather, tragi-comedy.
