Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. II.djvu/258

234 234 CASTILIAN LITERATURE. PART I. ued bj another hand, some, though to judge from the internal evidence afforded by the style, not many years later. The second author was Fernan- do de RoxaSj bachelor of law, as he informs us, who composed this work as a sort of intellectual re- laxation, during one of his vacations. The time was certainly not misspent. The continuation, however, is not esteemed by the Castilian critics to have risen quite to the level of the original act. ^^ The story turns on a love intrigue. A Spanish youth of rank is enamoured of a lady, whose af- fections he gains with some difficulty, but whom he finally seduces, through the arts of an accom- plished courtesan, whom the author has introduced under the romantic name of Celestina. The piece, although comic, or rather sentimental in its pro- gress, terminates in the most tragical catastrophe, in which all the principal actors are involved. 36 Trao-icomedia de Calisto y Melibea, (Alcala, 1586,) Introd. — Nothing is positively ascertain- ed respecting the authorship of the first act of the Celestina. Some iinpute it to Juan de Mena ; others with more probability to Rodrigo Cota el Tio, of Toledo, a person who, altiiough literally nothing is known of him, has in some way or other obtained the credit of the authorship of some of the most popular effusions of the fifteenth century ; such, for example, as the Dialogue above cited of " Love and an Old ]Ian," the Coplas of " Mingo Revulgo," and this first act of the " Celestina." The principal foundation of these im- Eutations would appear to be the are assertion of an editor of the " Dialogue between Love and an Old Man," which appeared at ]Mc- dina del Campo, in 1569, nearly a century, probably, after Cota's death ; another example of the obscurity which involves the his- tory of the early Spanish drama. Many of the Castilian critics de- tect a flavor of antiquity in the first act which should carry back its composition as far as John IL's reign. Moratin does not discern this, however, and is inclined to refer its production to a date not much more distant, if any, than Isabella's time. To the unpractis- ed eye of a foreigner, as far as style is concerned, the whole work might well seem the production of the same period. Moratin, Obras, torn. i. pp. 88, 115, 116.— Did- logo de las Lcnguas, apud Mayans y Siscar, Origenes, pp. 165 - 167. — Nic. Antonio, BibliothecaNova, torn. ii. p. 263.