Celestina, Or, The Tragicke-comedy Of Calisto And Melibea
SynopsisPlot
Celestina tells the story of Calisto, a young nobleman who becomes passionately infatuated with the beautiful Melibea. Unable to win her love on his own, he enlists the help of Celestina, an old and shrewd procuress skilled in manipulation, flattery, and magic.
Story
About this book
Celestina, first published in Spain at the end of the fifteenth century, is one of the earliest extended prose works in Spanish literature. It follows Calisto, a young nobleman overcome by desire for Melibea, a woman who initially rejects him. Desperate to reach her, he turns to Celestina, an aging go-between with a sharp tongue and a talent for manipulation. Celestina agrees to help, but her motives are bound to profit rather than kindness, and the arrangement draws in Calisto's servants, each pursuing gains of their own.
The work unfolds almost entirely through dialogue, reading closer to a play than a novel, though its length made stage performance impractical in its own time. Characters speak in ways that shift between formal courtly language and blunt, street-level speech, giving each figure a distinct voice. Greed, lust, and self-deception drive the plot forward, and the consequences that follow are sharp and physical rather than abstract.
This English edition uses the translation by James Mabbe, an early seventeenth-century scholar who rendered the Spanish text into vigorous Jacobean English. Mabbe's version became a notable work of English prose in its own right, preserving the story's mix of comedy and violence in language shaped by the same period that produced Shakespeare and Ben Jonson.
