Let no man shut his doors;
If Love should come to call,
’T will do no good at all.
[419] They are called actos in the original; but neither act nor scene is a proper name for the parts of which the Celestina is composed; since it occasionally mingles up, in the most confused manner, and in the same act, conversations that necessarily happened at the same moment in different places. Thus, in the fourteenth act, we have conversations held partly between Calisto and Melibœa inside her father’s garden, and partly between Calisto’s servants, who are outside of it; all given as a consecutive dialogue, without any notice of the change of place.
[420] Rojas, the author of all but the first act of the Celestina, says, in a prefatory letter to a friend, that the first act was supposed by some to have been the work of Juan de Mena, and by others to have been the work of Rodrigo Cota. The absurdity of the first conjecture was noticed long ago by Nicolas Antonio, and has been admitted ever since, while, on the other hand, what we have of Cota falls in quite well with the conjecture that he wrote it; besides which, Alonso de Villegas, in the verses prefixed to his “Selvagia,” 1554, to be noticed hereafter, says expressly, “Though he was poor and of low estate, (pobre y de baxo lugar,) we know that Cota’s skill (ciencia) enabled him to begin the great Celestina, and that Rojas finished it with an ambrosial air that can never be enough valued”;—a testimony heretofore overlooked, but one which, under the circumstances of the case, seems sufficient to decide the question.
As to the time when the Celestina was written, we must bring it into the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, before which we cannot find sufficient ground for believing such Spanish prose to have been possible. It is curious, however, that, from one and the same passage in the third act of the Celestina, Blanco White (Variedades, London, 1824, 8vo, Tom. I. p. 226) supposes Rojas to have written his part of it before the fall of Granada, and Germond de Lavigne (Celestine, p. 63) supposes him to have written it either afterwards, or at the very time when the last siege was going on. But Blanco White’s inference seems to be the true one, and would place both parts of it before 1490. If to this we add the allusions (Acts 4 and 7) to the autos da fé and their arrangements, we must place it after 1480, when the Inquisition was first established. But this is doubtful.
[421] Blanco White gives ingenious reasons for supposing that Seville is the city referred to. He himself was born there, and could judge well.
[422] The Trota-conventos of Juan Ruiz, the Archpriest of Hita, has already been noticed; and certainly is not without a resemblance to the Celestina. Besides, in the Second Act of “Calisto y Melibœa,” Celestina herself is once expressly called Trota-conventos.
[423] Rojas states these facts in his prefatory anonymous letter, already mentioned, and entitled “El Autor á un su Amigo”; and he declares his own name and authorship in an acrostic, called “El Autor excusando su Obra,” which immediately follows the epistle, and the initial letters of which bring out the following words: “El Bachiller Fernando de Rojas acabó la comedia de Calysto y Meliboea, y fue nascido en la puebla de Montalvan.” Of course, if we believe Rojas himself, there can be no doubt on this point.
[424] Blanco White, in a criticism on the Celestina, (Variedades, Tom. I. pp. 224, 296,) expresses this opinion, which is also found in the Preface to M. Germond de Lavigne’s French translation of the Celestina. L. F. Moratin, too, (Obras, Tom. I. Parte I. p. 88,) thinks there is no difference in style between the two parts, though he treats them as the work of different writers. But the acute author of the “Diálogo de las Lenguas” (Mayans y Siscar, Orígenes, Madrid, 1737, 12mo, Tom. II. p. 165) is of a different opinion, and so is Lampillas, Ensayo, Madrid, 1789, 4to, Tom. VI. p. 54.