La Celestina

Host Aaron Henne: Welcome to The Dybbukast. I'm Aaron Henne, artistic director of theatre dybbuk. In this episode, we are excited to share one of our recent Illuminated Lectures that was recorded as a live presentation on April 30, 2026 at The Philosophical Research Society in Los Angeles.

In this lecture, Professor Barbara Fuchs addresses La Celestina, a text written in Spain at the turn of the sixteenth century, soon after the expulsion of the Jews. La Celestina asks radically uncomfortable questions of its society and our own: what do we owe each other, especially across lines of class or gender? How do we make room for ourselves in a place where we may not be welcome? In a time of profound dislocation, how do we find meaning in the world?

Joining Professor Fuchs are actors Edgar Landa, Julie Lockhart, Jacob Surovsky, and Ilana Zackon who perform excerpts from La Celestina and other texts, while musician Jeremy Robinson provides musical accompaniment. The live recording was edited for the podcast by Julie Lockhart and Gregory Scharpen.

And now - “La Celestina”

•••

(We hear audience applause.)

Actor 1 (Celestina): I conjure you, o Pluto, lord of the infernal deep… I, Celestina, your best known client, conjure you by the virtue and force of these red letters, by the blood of that nocturnal bird with which they are written, by the power and weight of the names and signs on this paper, by the bitter poison of snakes from which I made the oil with which I anoint this yarn: come without delay to do as I say…

Dr. Barbara Fuchs: Celestina literally steals the show.

The book that bears her name wasn’t even supposed to be about her. Not really. But authors don’t control what readers do with what they write.

When the book was first published in Burgos, Spain, in 1499, it was called

All Actors: The Comedy of Calisto and Melibea,

Barbara: But really, those two didn’t stand a chance. Not next to her.

Before long, everyone was referring to this story as

All Actors: Celestina—

Barbara: a character so memorable she probably should have been in the title.

But then she’s barely presentable, really. Her house, we’re told, is…

Actor 2 (Pármeno): On the edge of the city, over by the tanneries, on the bank of the river, off by itself, half collapsed, badly kept up and even worse provisioned.

Barbara: And here is a partial list of her many professions:

Actor 1: Seamstress,

Actor 3: maker of perfumes,

Actor 4: expert in cosmetics,

Actor 2: mender of lost maidenheads,

Actor 3: go-between,

Actor 1: a little bit of a witch.

Barbara: Can’t live with her, can’t live without her. Everyone knows of her, because everyone needs her services at one point or another. She knows how to wrap customers around her little finger, even when they think they’re getting what they want. And when she can’t get what she needs from them or for them, she’s not above a little conjuring. Even the Devil comes when Celestina calls. But more on that later.

Celestina is such a character that she’s become a common noun—like Pander, who was first just a helpful guy in both Chaucer and Shakespeare’s versions of Troilus and Cressida, and then became the very word for a go-between. According to Collins’ Dictionary, a pander is:

Actor 2: 1. a person who furnishes clients for a prostitute or supplies persons for illicit sexual intercourse; procurer; pimp

Actor 4: 2. a person who caters to or profits from the weaknesses or vices of others

Actor 3: 3. a go-between in amorous intrigues

Barbara: So, almost exactly like Celestina, the epitome of her profession. Una celestina, the common noun, is what we now call a go-between, an alcahueta, with all its unsavory connotations. According to the Diccionario de Autoridades, when used ironically, celestina also refers to …

Actor 1: a fixer, someone who helps to make illicit connections in politics or commerce.

Barbara: As I said, so unsavoury. And yet the list of synonyms for Celestina is nothing short of delicious (We won’t even try to translate them):

Actor 1: alcahueta,

Actor 2: tercera,

Actor 3: trotaconventos,

Actor 4: encubridora,

Actor 3: cobertera, corredera, correveidile,

Actor 1: enflautadora,

Actor 4: comadre,

Actor 2: encandiladera,

Actor 3: encandiladora, conseguidora, burdelera.

Barbara: You see, I haven’t even gotten past her name and already she is stealing the show. Just like I said. Though this is supposedly the story of Calisto’s love for Melibea, and Celestina is just the go-between, I haven’t even managed to tell you the plot yet.

But really. Listen to how they describe her:

Actor 3 (Sempronio): I know a bearded old woman who calls herself Celestina, a witch, most astute, and expert in all evil doings. I hear more than 5000 virginities have been made and unmade upon her authority in this city. She can make the very stones shake with lust if she so desires.

Barbara: Quite the description. Yet the text refuses to let us stay with just one character’s account. Instead, we get Celestina’s own voice to complicate what we’ve just heard. She is fierce in defending her ubiquity–she plies her many trades in order to survive:

Actor 1 (Celestina): Few virgins, thank God, have ever set up shop in this city whom I have not helped sell their wares. As soon as a girl is born, I write her down in my register so I can track if any have escaped my net. Why, what did you think, Sempronio? Can I live off the wind? Did I inherit, perchance? Do I have any other house or vineyard? Do I have any other source of income, other than my trade? What allows me to eat and drink? What puts clothes on my back and shoes on my feet? I was born and raised in this city, and keep myself honorably, as everyone well knows. How could I not be well known? If anyone ignores my name or address, you can be sure he’s a foreigner.

Barbara: In a patriarchal world that fears and stigmatizes female sexuality, how should we reconcile these accounts? Celestina is a character capacious enough to contain all these contradictions: illicit enabler and purveyor of sex; victim of sexist accusations; proud friend and defender of women.

Actor 1 (Celestina): I am an old woman as God made me, no worse than the next. I live by my occupation, just like any other working person does, most properly. I do not seek those who do not seek me. They come to fetch me from my house, or beg of me right there and then. Let God be my witness, whether my life is good or bad.

Barbara: So how did we get here? Celestina is a tricky story, entirely in dialogue, of love and loyalty gone wrong, of a seamy underworld that connects the supposedly respectable with those on the margins. In tracing how Calisto’s passion for Melibea leads to virtually every single character’s fall, the story remains wide open to interpretation, especially because there is no narrator to guide us. Words multiply, with most characters using language as much to obfuscate, confuse, and seduce as to communicate. Maybe for all these reasons, its author tries to offer careful framing, and plausible deniability.

Hence the prologue, which is supposedly there to tell us:

-- First, who the author was, maybe. The “author” who writes the prologue tells us he’s just found an anonymous text, one so useful that he wanted to get it to readers:

Actor 3: As I considered how fine it was, its subtle workings, its strong and clear mettle, its mode and manner of working, its elegant style, never before heard or seen in our Spanish tongue, I saw… how from its details there sprang delectable little fountains of wisdom, and delightful jokes, and warnings and advice against flatterers and bad servants and treacherous witchy women.

Barbara: However, that first author, he says, wasn’t quite willing to be associated with the text:

Actor 3: For fear of detractors and harmful tongues, readier to reproach than to create anything themselves, I- he decided to hide and disguise his name.

Barbara: So he, the second author, can’t be blamed for doing the same. Mysteries upon mysteries, caution upon caution. Then, the 1500 edition of Celestina adds to the “Prologue” a nifty acrostic poem, a not-so-secret cypher revealing its authorship. If you read down the verses, the first letters of each line spell out:

Actor 3: El bachiller Fernando de Rojas,

All Actors: “the graduate Fernando de Rojas”

Actor 3: Acabó la comedia de Calisto y Melibea,

All Actors: “finished this comedy of Calisto and Melibea”

Barbara: And, in case you were wondering which Fernando de Rojas,

Actor 3: Y fue nacido en la Puebla de Montalván -

All Actors: “and was born in Puebla de Montalván.”

Barbara: That’s the one, of course. That Fernando de Rojas. The book he wrote is so incendiary that it makes more sense as part of that large class of literature, well represented in the Spain of the period, authored by a certain

All Actors: “ANONYMOUS.”

Barbara: In many cases, these anonymous authors were religious minorities—crypto-Jews, or Protestant sympathizers —whose marginalization and persecution made them acutely aware of their society’s foibles and contradictions. Persecuted by the Inquisition, which was first set up in Spain in 1478, just a few years before Celestina, these authors became expert in making their points through indirection and irony, just as in their own lives they concealed their true identities and beliefs behind a façade of compliance and consent.

Hiding your traces—your origin, your true name, your forebears and their religion—became a standard move, so that anonymity as a writer made perfect sense. Calling attention to that anonymity–with a big, showy, acrostic, natch, might be considered a case of protesting too much.

But back to the Prologue: beyond the author, there is also plenty of explaining to do about the text itself. And so the prologue tackles how and why the author is giving us this story. As we just noted, “Rojas” claims that once he “ found” Act I (wasn’t me), he decided to extend it, for the betterment of society:

Actor 3: I saw… how from its details there sprang delectable little fountains of wisdom, and delightful jokes, and warnings and advice against flatterers and bad servants and treacherous witchy women.

Barbara: Ah… the entire book is a warning, a cautionary example of what not to do:

Actor 3: The author admonishes lovers to serve God and abandon their evil thoughts and vices of love: you who love, take this example, this fine armor to defend yourself with. Take hold of the reins, so that you are not lost! And praise God always. And go to Church.

O ladies young and old, youths, married men,

see what a life these ones led!

And take as a mirror the ending they met!

Barbara: The prologue asks us to believe that we should contemplate this racy story, full of sex and violence, because it will be good for us. Since its characters come to a bad end, we will learn from them how not to act. Of course, we still argue today about whether sex and violence—online, in movies, in video games—is bad for us, especially the youngest among us. But we don’t usually make the argument that they improve us.

At least one early reader, the English writer Anthony Munday, thought that Celestina was truly dangerous. In his marvelously titled pamphlet,

Actor 4: “The Second and Third Blast of Retreat from Plays and Theaters,”

Barbara: from 1580, he seems to be referencing a possible performance of the text in English, of which we unfortunately have no other evidence:

Actor 4: “Comedies are, for the most part, after one manner of nature, like the tragical comedy of Calistus, where the bawdess Celestina inflamed the maiden Melibea with her sorceries. Do we not use in these discourses to counterfeit witchcraft, charmed drinks and amorous potions, thereby to draw the affections of men and stir them up unto lust, to like even those who of themselves they abhor? The examples whereof stir up the ignorant multitudes to seek by such unlawful means the love and goodwill of others.”

Barbara: Does the prologue protest too much? Perhaps. What else would you say, really, when introducing a story that is anything but wholesome? And here is an even more destabilizing proposition: what if not just the prologue’s justification, but also the whole sex-and-violence shtick, are both red herrings? What if beyond the sexy potboiler (no, really, it will teach you to be good!) what we have here is a deeply philosophical meditation on the meaninglessness of life, a kind of existentialism avant-la-lettre? Perhaps a reasonable response from an author, who, like many of these marginalized characters, comes to the conclusion that all we can do is endure, with perhaps a bit of pleasure along the way? An undecidable question, perhaps, given how powerful the surface story is, but you’ll have to tell me what you think.

Whatever its origins, and even if it was just the proverbial spoonful of sugar, Celestina proved wildly popular, with almost one hundred editions published between 1499 and 1633. A runaway bestseller, it was translated and read widely across Europe, from papal courts in Rome all the way to merry England, where it arrived, we assume, with the bashful bride Catherine of Aragon in 1502.

Here’s a particularly juicy bit of heresy across several versions:

Actor 4: I am a Melibean, I adore Melibea, I believe in Melibea, and I love Melibea

Actor 3: I would thou knewest, Melibea worship I;

In her I believe, and her I love.

Actor 2: Melibéen je suis, Melibée j’adore, à Melibée je crois, et Melibée j’aime

Actor 1: Io Melibeo sono, et Melibea adoro, a Melibea credo, e Melibea amo

Barbara: Speaking of which: critics often point out that there seems to be a lot of Celestina in Juliet’s nurse, in Romeo and Juliet, so a secondary figure serving the needs of another. Famously bawdy if not quite a bawd, she teases Juliet about her burning desire for Romeo:

Actor 1 (Nurse): Well, you have made a simple choice; you know not how to choose a man: Romeo! no, not he; though his face be better than any man's, yet his leg excels all men's...

Barbara: But this is not Romeo and Juliet. In this world, there is nothing to prevent Calisto from asking for Melibea’s hand—no feud between families, no difference. His decision to pursue her outside of marriage is one part misplaced Petrarchan idealization, in which love denied only grows, and three parts raw lust. At the heart of this text is human venality—even though fortune is repeatedly blamed, what leads to the characters' downfall is, arguably, their own lust and greed.

Cervantes noticed this about Celestina, claiming it was…

Actor 3: “A book in my opinion divine, if only it covered up the human a bit more.”

Barbara: So what actually happens? The story goes that one day the noble Calisto wandered into Melibea’s garden in search of his falcon, which had flown there. Immediately smitten, he tells her of his love, but she rejects him in no uncertain terms:

Actor 4 (Calisto): In this I see God’s greatness, Melibea.

Actor 2 (Melibea): In what, Calisto?

Actor 4 (Calisto): In giving nature the power to endow you with such perfect beauty, and in allowing me, so undeserving, to see you and in such a place as I might tell you of my secret longing! The glorious saints in Heaven, who rejoice in the sight of God, do not enjoy it as much as I do the sight of you!

Actor 2 (Melibea): Is that so, Calisto?

Actor 4 (Calisto): If God were to seat me above all his saints in heaven, I would not consider it a greater happiness!

Actor 2 (Melibea): If you carry on like this, I will reward you in kind.

Actor 4 (Calisto): O my fortunate ears!

Actor 2 (Melibea): Unfortunate, when you hear me out, for your punishment will be as fierce as your mad daring deserves! How could a man like you try the virtue of a woman like me? Get out, get out, you boor–I cannot bear the thought that a man’s heart would dare speak to me of the pleasure of illicit love!

Barbara: So much for that. Calisto then takes to his bed, in such a state of despair that his servant, Sempronio, wonders what to do:

Actor 3 (Sempronio): Should I leave him alone or go in to him? If I leave him, he will kill himself, if I go in he’ll kill me. Let him be: what do I care! Better he should die, if he finds life annoying, than for me to die, when I love it!

Barbara: Sempronio eventually gets Calisto to explain what’s wrong. His master is in deep, so enamored of Melibea, so taken with her body, so exalted, so exaggerated, that he sounds heretical:

Actor 3 (Sempronio): Are you not a Christian?

Actor 4 (Calisto): Me? I am a Melibean. I adore Melibea and I believe in Melibea and I love Melibea.

Barbara: Sempronio can’t believe it—all this, over a woman? Sensing an opportunity, however, he convinces his master that he should hire Celestina to help him enjoy Melibea’s favors. His other servant, Pármeno, is appalled—as a boy, he served in Celestina’s house, and he has very strong opinions about the one he calls

Actor 2 (Pármeno): “an old made-up whore.”

Barbara: When Calisto protests, he doubles down:

Actor 2 (Pármeno): She takes pride in that name, just as you might if someone said “Calisto is a fine gentleman”! … If she goes among one hundred women and someone shouts “Old whore!” she’ll turn around with no shame whatsoever and happily answer to that name. At celebrations, at parties, at weddings, at religious events, at funerals, at all times that people come together, they seek her out. If she walks by some dogs, they bark it, if there are birds nearby, they sing it, if sheep, they bleat it, if donkeys, they bray it:

Actor 3: “Old whore!”

Actor 2 (Pármeno): “Old whore!” The frogs in the puddles croak nothing else! If she goes among the blacksmiths, their hammers say as much—carpenters, armorers, farriers, braziers, joiners—the tools of any trade voice this name into the air! The carpenters sing this song, the combers comb it out, the weavers, the farmers, in the plowed fields, in the vineyards, in the harvests, they pass the day repeating it. When someone loses at a game, they sing her praises! All things that make noise, wherever she might be, repeat no other name but this! What more do you want? When one stone strikes another it rings out,

Actors 2, 3, and 4: “Old whore!”

Barbara: Pármeno knows all sides of her:

Actor 2 (Pármeno): She had six jobs: seamstress, maker of perfumes, expert in cosmetics, mender of lost maidenheads, go-between, and a little bit of a witch. The first office was cover for all the others, for with that excuse all kinds of serving girls made their way to her house, to be stitched and to stitch shifts or collars or other things, and none of them came without some bacon or wheat or flour or a pitcher of wine or other provisions they’d managed to steal from their mistresses, and even more serious thefts were hidden there. She befriended students and stewards and the servants of clerics, to whom she sold the innocent blood of those foolish girls, who were all too ready to take their chances, since anyway she promised to restore them afterwards. And what’s more: through those girls she managed to get through to the more closely guarded ones, and would not stop until she got her way with them. In some houses, she would claim to cure babies; in others, she would gather up flax, then bring it to yet another house to be spun, just to have an excuse to get into all of them.

Barbara: Celestina is tireless:

Actor 2 (Pármeno): At her house, she would make perfumes, with fake balsams, civet, ambergris, powders, musk and roses. She had a room filled with alambics, small vials, little pots made out of clay and glass and copper and tin, in a thousand shapes and sizes. She made face paints and waxes and little wands to apply them with, and lotions and potions and clarifiers and whiteners and polishers and smoothers, and special tonics from wine-lees and tree-bark and roots and daffodil and grape-must… She made perfumes from roses and orange blossom and jasmine and clover and honeysuckle and carnations and hyacinths, all pounded and soaked in wine. For mending maidenheads, she had some little animal bladders, and some she just stitched up with her needle. She had a little box with the smallest needles, like glovers use, and waxed silk thread, and roots hanging all around, of St. John’s wort and blood bloom and squill and ground thistle. And with these she worked wonders–why, when the French ambassador was here, she sold him a girl three times over, as a virgin each and every time. Men and women alike came to her, and she would ask them for a bit of bread that they had bitten, or some piece of clothing they’d worn, or some of their hair. Or she would daub letters on the palm of their hands with saffron, or with vermilion. To others she’d give hearts made out of wax, stuck full of broken needles, and other little figures made out of clay and lead, dreadful to see…

Barbara: In his language, Pármeno seems to pick up Celestina’s excess, as he spins out his tale of her endless labors. But despite his impassioned speech, Celestina soon wins him over, overcoming his scruples with the help of the women who work in her house:

Actor 1 (Celestina): Oh, how happy it would make me, Pármeno, if you would come to my house to be happy, to see me, and also to take your pleasure with a girl!

Actor 2 (Pármeno): A girl, mother?

Barbara: And while all this is going on, Celestina remarkably (or maybe not so remarkably), succeeds in her mission as go-between:

Actor 1 (Celestina): All day, my lord Calisto, I’ve been working for you, and letting other good business pass me by. So many complaining to me because I’m just trying to make you happy. I’ve lost out on so much, more than you think. But it’s all worth it, because I bring such good news… Melibea is entirely at your service!

Barbara: And so Calisto and Melibea plan their sexual tryst:

Actor 2 (Melibea): O my love! Do you want to be my undoing, and ruin my reputation? Don’t let your desires take the reins! Come tomorrow night, at this same hour, over the wall of my garden!!

Barbara: When chapters are added to the story, we get more sex scenes, which, after all, as the prologue tells us, is what audiences want. And then… well, everything falls apart after that. Given their master’s imminent success, Sempronio and Pármeno demand that Celestina share with them the gold Calisto had given her, as she had in fact promised—she did the work, but they brought her the client, and promises are promises. But she refuses:

Actor 3 (Sempronio): You greedy old woman, dying of thirst for gold! Can’t you be happy with your third?

Actor 1 (Celestina): What third? Get out of my house, by God!

Barbara: So Sempronio comes at her with a knife:

Actor 1 (Celestina): Justice, justice! Help, neighbors! Justice! These ruffians are trying to kill me in my own house!

Actor 3 (Sempronio): Ruffians, you say? Just you wait, you old sorceress–I’ll send you straight to hell!

Actor 1 (Celestina): Oh, I am slain, oh oh! Confession, confession!

Barbara: So much for our remarkable protagonist. Sempronio and Pármeno try to escape out the window:

Actor 3 (Sempronio): Flee, flee, Pármeno, people are starting to gather. Look out, look out, the police are coming!

Actor 2 (Pármeno): Sinner that I am, there is no way out! The door is blocked.

Actor 3 (Sempronio): Let’s take the window. Anything, rather than dying at the hand of the law!

Barbara: Stunned by their fall, they are quickly arrested and beheaded for their crime, bringing shame to Calisto’s house, his remaining servants are distressed:

Actor 1 (Sosia): Woe is me, what sorrow could be greater! Such dishonor on my master’s house! O what a terrible day has dawned! O poor boys!

Actor 3 (Tristan): What is it? What’s wrong? What are you going on about? What terrible day?

Actor 1 (Sosia): Our old companions, our brothers…

Actor 3 (Tristan): Are you drunk have you lost your mind or do you have some truly bad news to share? Won’t you just tell me what is going on? What are you saying about those fellows?

Actor 1 (Sosia): They lie beheaded in the street.

Barbara: Undaunted, Calisto returns to Melibea’s tower to finally consummate their love, accompanied by these other servants. But their delight is short-lived. The very next night, as the violence grows and spreads, Calisto’s other servants are accosted in the street. Celestina’s girls, it turns out, have sent some thugs to revenge Sempronio and Pármeno’s deaths–why should Calisto and Melibea enjoy love, after all, when they have lost their lovers? Hearing a commotion below,

(Actors 1 and 3 make sounds of discomfort.)

Barbara: Calisto decides to see what is going on:

Actor 4 (Calisto): Let me go, my lady. That’s Sosia shouting. Let me go help him, or he’ll be killed–he’s only got a little page boy with him. Give me my cape–you’re lying on it.

Actor 2 (Melibea): Oh woe is me, how swiftly you go to it, unarmed and ready to face an unknown enemy!

Actor 3 (Tristan): Hold on, my lord, don’t come down! They’re gone now!

Barbara: Calisto begins to descend from on high,

Actor 4 (Calisto): Ahhhhhh!

Barbara: but falls to a grisly death on the cobblestones:

Actor 4 (Calisto): Oh, may holy Mary save me! I’m dead! Confession, confession!

Actor 1 (Sosia): My lord! My lord! He’s as dead as my granddaddy. Oh misfortune!

Actor 3 (Tristan): Oh what a sad death, and with no confession! Sosía, help me gather his brains, that lie scattered among the cobblestones, and place them again in his head, o unfortunate master!

Barbara: And then Melibea, fresh from their shared bed, and in despair at Calisto’s death, throws herself from the tower,

Actor 2 (Melibea): Ahhhhhh!

Barbara: This leads eventually to her own mother’s death and her father’s utter despair.

Beyond this plot, one of the remarkable things about Celestina, the book, is how it portrays the world from below. Though probably not a playable play, the text is entirely in dialogue, emphasizing the importance of getting things straight from the horse’s mouth—or, indeed, from the mouth of whoever happens to be talking. Beyond the unsavory protagonist who steals the show are servants and sex workers who all get their say. In a highly stratified society, where social position seems fixed and the have-nots far outnumber the haves, this book is groundbreaking in centering those on the bottom. The irreverence and power of their voices is striking, as they tell us what the world looks like from where they stand, often to devastating effect.

So Sempronio tells us early on:

Actor 3 (Sempronio): Good and evil, prosperity and adversity, glory and pity, all lose with time the force they had at the start. For even the most remarkable cases, and things deeply desired, are sooner past that they are forgotten. Every day we see and hear novelties that we pass by and leave behind. Time diminishes them and makes them contingent. How surprised would you be if they said, “The earth moved,” or some such thing? Wouldn’t you just forget it in a minute? Or if they said, the river is frozen over; the blind man can see; your father has died; lightning has struck, Granada is won; the king makes his entrance today; the Ottomans have been defeated, there’s an eclipse tomorrow, the bridge has been washed away, that one was made a bishop, Pedro was robbed, Inés hung herself, Cristóbal was a drunk. What would you say, but that in three days time or given a second look, no one would be surprised? It’s all like that, that’s how it all goes, all is forgotten, all is left behind.

Barbara: Consider that list for a moment: great moments in national history (Granada is won! The Ottomans have been defeated!), and devastating private sorrows (your father has died! Inés hung herself!) are leveled into nothingness. Sempronio’s radical disregard for all pieties makes for a skeptical, even nihilistic approach. We might realize how unreliable this makes him, but Calisto is gloriously unaware.

With no fancy people to overhear them, the lower-class characters dispense with the niceties, and give us their unfiltered takes.

Actor 1 (Celestina): You can put up with this master of yours and serve him for now, until I tell you otherwise. But not with blind loyalty, trying to stand on a false foundation, which is what most of these masters are these days. Make friends instead, for that is what lasts. Be constant to them. Don’t live on vain hopes. Give up on the false assurances of lords, who exhaust their servants with hollow and vain promises. Like leeches that suck up blood, they never thank them, they wrong them, they overlook their services, they deny them their reward. … Masters today love themselves more than they love their people. And they’re not wrong. Their people should do the same.

Barbara: There is no loyalty, no reverence, no respect for those who sit above them—or is it on them?  Given their access, servants can see more clearly than most how misguided, silly, obsessed Calisto is, how ready to forswear everything for the sake of his lust.

Pármeno holds out the longest, resisting Celestina’s invitation to betray his master. But when Calisto won’t listen to him, he, too, concludes that loyalty doesn’t pay:

Actor 2 (Pármeno): This’ll teach me how to treat him in the future! If he says, let’s eat and be merry, I’ll go right along with it; if he wants to knock down his own house, I’ll be all for it; if he wants to burn through his money, I’ll fetch the fire. Let him destroy, break, tear down, undo, give all he has to a bawd, I’ll make sure I get what’s mine. There’s good fishing in troubled waters. Never again will I be like the dog at the mill, beaten for my barking to sound the alarm.

Barbara: This clarity on class applies also to the women who live and work in Celestina’s house. Areúsa, one of Celestina’s followers, is particularly clear-headed. When Sempronio mentions Melibea and Calisto’s nobility, she gives him an earful:

Actor 4 (Areúsa): Only those who consider themselves low are low. It’s your actions that make you noble–we’re all descended from the same Adam and Eve. Let everyone look to their own goodness, instead of claiming virtue from noble ancestors.

Barbara: This might explain why Areúsa prefers her independence, under whatever conditions, to being a servant. Anything, she stresses, is preferable to that:

Actor 4 (Areúsa): Those poor girls who work for great ladies never experience pleasure or the sweet rewards of love. I’ve never belonged to anyone but myself. Especially given the fine ladies these days—you give them the best years of your life, and they reward ten years of service with some old skirt they no longer wear. They insult their servants and mistreat them, they keep them down, so that they hardly dare open their mouth.

And when it’s time to marry those servants off, they accuse them of sleeping with a servingman, or with their son, or of having an affair with their husband, or bringing men into the house, or stealing a cup, or losing a ring! They give them a hundred lashes and throw them out with their skirts over their heads, screaming: “Get out of here, you thief, you whore! I won’t let you ruin my house and reputation!” So where they expect a reward, they get reproaches; where they expect to be married, they get manhandled; where they expect wedding presents and the whole get-up, they are dismissed naked and disgraced! That’s how they reward them!

Barbara: And she’s only getting started, in what, again, is a most lengthy and substantive intervention from the kind of character who doesn’t often get a voice:

Actor 4 (Areúsa): They never hear their actual name in their ladies’ mouth, only: “Come here, whore!” and “Go there, whore! Where are you going, you lousy bitch? What did you do, you fool? Why did you eat that, you glutton? Do you call that cleaning the frying pan, you pig! Why didn’t you wash the tablecloth, you dirty cow? What did you say, you idiot? Did you lose that plate, you careless fool? Where did that towel go, you thief? Did you give it to your pimp? Come here, you wicked woman! That cold chicken is not where I left it. You’d better find it, or I’ll take it out of your wages!” And then it’s hitting them with their shoes, and pinching them and beating them and whipping them from morning till night! There’s no pleasing ladies, and there’s no putting up with them! They love to shout, and scolding is their greatest glory. Whatever is best done, they appreciate the least. And that’s why, mother, I chose to live in my little house by myself, free to be my own mistress, rather than in their rich palaces, captive and oppressed.

Barbara: It turns out that the rich assume at their peril that their servants are actually on their side. If you create a wildly unequal society, you’ve pretty much decided to dispel with “mere decency,” “basic humanity,” and other such pablum. These simply do not apply across classes, though, as Celestina claims, they may grace some of the horizontal relations among the have-nots. The same Areúsa who is so clear that she would never serve a mistress is quite attached to her mates in Celestina’s house. In fact, the lower-class characters are the ones who seem to enjoy life and experience whatever solidarity is to be found in this world. A high point of the story is a feast at Celestina’s house, where she reminisces about how much she misses her youth, while encouraging others to make the most of their time:

Actor 1 (Celestina): Sit down, my children, sit down, there is room for everyone, thank God. If only we find as much room in Heaven when we get there!

Actor 2 (Lucrecia): God bless so many honorable folk!

Actor 1 (Celestina): So many, you say? You think this is many? You should have seen me in my good days, twenty years ago. Oh, to see me then and see me now, it’s enough to break a heart with sorrow. At this very table where your cousins sit now, I saw nine girls about your age, the oldest no more than eighteen, and none younger than fourteen. But Fortune decrees that nothing stays the same for long, and change is its only constant.

Barbara: Celestina may be older, but she is still powerful. So, given that Calisto wouldn’t follow the most obvious path to Melibea—asking her father for her hand in marriage—how exactly did Celestina work her magic? Ever a maximalist, she tried everything, everywhere, all at once, starting with… the devil:

Actor 1 (Celestina): I conjure you, o Pluto, lord of the infernal deep… I, Celestina, your best known client, conjure you by the virtue and force of these red letters, by the blood of that nocturnal bird with which they are written, by the power and weight of the names and signs on this paper, by the bitter poison of snakes from which I made the oil to anoint this yarn: come without delay to do as I say, envelop and wrap yourself in this, and never depart until that time when Melibea, when I offer her the chance, buys it from me and becomes so entangled that the more she looks upon it the more her heart will soften and yield to my request, as you open it and wound it with a violent and strong love for Calisto…

Barbara: This is Celestina at her most witchy, anticipating the foregone conclusion of Melibea’s seduction, by Celestina as much as by Calisto. More prosaically, it turns out Celestina is not completely unknown to Melibea’s household. Alisa, Melibea’s mother, recognizes her from other visits, suggesting a troubling closeness between their supposedly separate spheres, and perhaps a shared responsibility for the ensuing tragedy. The range of services that Celestina provides, from the borderline respectable to the completely transgressive, turns out to be a master strategy of dissimulation, or plausible deniability. After all, she’s not necessarily in your house to stitch up your lost virginity—she may just be selling thread. Yet her access to respectable homes and respectable ladies allows Celestina to address Melibea directly. She appeals to the young woman’s pity, and asks for Melibea’s sash to cure Calisto’s unbearable, urgent, deep… toothache. (There may be a touch of displacement going on here–in fact, in early modern Hispano-Italian contexts, women handed over their sashes to indicate their desire to lose their virginity):

Actor 1 (Celestina): I come from a man on his deathbed, who, with one word from your noble mouth, which I might take to him, tucked in my breast, will most certainly be cured, given how devoted he is to you…

Barbara: But when Melibea realizes that she is speaking of Calisto, she is furious:

Actor 2 (Melibea): Jesus! Don’t ever name this madman to me, this leaper of walls, this night-goblin, skinny as a stork, ugly as a scrawl on a wall, or I will die right here and now!

Barbara: So Celestina doubles down on the appeal to pity. No, no, Calisto just wants …

Actor 1 (Celestina): A prayer, my lady–they said you knew the one to Saint Apollonia, for the toothache. And also your sash, which people say has touched all the relics in Rome and Jerusalem…

Actor 2 (Melibea): If that’s what he wanted, why didn’t you say so from the start?

Barbara: And just like that, apologizing for her violent reaction, she hands over the sash that encircled her body. Continuing the metaphors of webs and weaving, that sash, a thin red strand, will connect the two lovers as it stands in, metaphorically, for her bleeding. Delicate yet potent in its promise, Melibea’s sash winds its way through the city and through the text, leading us to the now seemingly inevitable connection between the two soon-to-be-lovers.

There is no more talk of the devil as everything falls to pieces, as we heard. The tragic turn is all too human, though it is unclear how to apportion responsibility, if that is even possible. After everything has gone wrong, how do we make sense of the ravaged ethical landscape? Is Calisto to blame for his lust, and his failure to approach Melibea honorably? Is Celestina to blame for her trade, when she was just enabling what the young people wanted, and which she delivered? Is Melibea at fault, for her own fall into sexuality? Melibea’s mother, or the housemaid, for not shooing Celestina away? Sempronio and Pármeno, for their lack of loyalty to Calisto and greed vis-à-vis Celestina? Or, perhaps most terrifying of all, is it really just chance whether we live or die, whether the ladder slips or the brakes give out or some other thing goes wrong?

The text includes one response to the dire conclusion of the plot, in an extended monologue from Melibea’s father, Pleberio. At the same time, this final note of despair has been read as reflecting the broader cultural context: Pleberio’s lament is widely considered to give voice to the Jewish experience in the 1490’s, as Ferdinand and Isabel, having defeated Spain’s last Muslim kingdom in Granada, decreed that all Jews must convert to Christianity or abandon the land they knew as Sepharad. Pleberio does not address this directly at all, in fact, the power of his speech is arguably its obliqueness.

His daughter’s senseless death tips him into despair, and suddenly so much else seems to make no sense. His has become a world upside down, untethered, unmoored in the face of tragedy. That is why his individual lament resonates so profoundly. A collective tragedy is actually numberless individual tragedies accreted. We are famously bad at processing the large-scale, though we feel compassion for the individual tragedy.

Actor 3 (Pleberio): Why did I grow old and gray, only to feel such sorrow? If only these white hairs were buried in the earth, rather than the golden ones I see before me! My days are too long! I will reproach death and complain of how long it takes, if I am to be without you now. Let my life go on no longer, if I no longer have you by my side! Oh my dear wife, rise up from her, and if you have any life left in you, spend your last days with me in groans and broken sighs. But if your spirit now rests with her, if you have left this sorrowful life behind, why did you leave me to bear it all? Women have the advantage of men in this, for a great sorrow can take them from this world without even noticing it, or at least make them lose their senses, which is a kind of comfort.

Barbara: For a text so interested in how the female experience differs from the male, this is an odd focus on female sensibility: women suffer more, and thus find respite more easily, whether their great sorrow kills them or simply drives them mad. But Pleberio is also eloquent on the particular devastation, to either parent, of having a child die:

Actor 3 (Pleberio): Oh, for a father’s heart to be so hard! Why do you not break with grief, now that your beloved child is gone? For whom did I build towers? For whom did I seek honors? For whom did I plant orchards? For whom did I build ships? O pitiless earth, how can you possibly sustain me? Where will my unconsolable years find refuge? O fickle fortune, minister and steward of worldly goods, why did you not vent your cruel wrath, your inconstant whims, upon what is subject to you? Why did you not destroy my property, or burn down my house, or devastate my lands? If you had spared that flower in bloom and given me a happy old age after a troubled youth, you would not have perverted the natural order of things. I could have suffered your slings and arrows when I was young and strong, better than in my last weak days.

Barbara: The enormity of his loss leads Pleberio to question the very order of things:

Actor 3 (Pleberio): O world! When I was a tender lad I thought you and your events were ruled by some order. Now I see that you are both pro and con. You seem to me a labyrinth of errors, a frightful desert, a den of wild of beasts, a game where men may run in circles, a lake of mud, a thicket of thorns, a dense forest, a stony field, a meadow full of snakes, a flowering orchard that bears no fruit, a fountain of cares, a river of tears, a sea of miseries, labor without profit, a sweet poison, a sweet hope, a false joy, and a true sorrow. You bait us with delights, o world, when feast upon them you reveal the hook from which we may not free ourselves, for our wills are held captive. You promise much, but keep none of it, and then cast us off so we cannot demand that you keep those vain promises. We recklessly race through your fields of vices, only to be ambushed when there is no turning back.

Many have forsaken you for fear you would forsake them instead. And they may consider themselves happy when they see how you reward this poor old man for his long service. You put out our eyes, and then anoint them with consolations.You spare none, so that none will be alone in his affliction, for misery, you say, loves company! And yet, miserable old man than I am, I am so alone!

What will I do when I go into your room and find it empty? What will I do when I call and you do not respond? Who can fill my great longing for you? No one has ever lost what I have lost today. O false world, what comfort can you offer my old weary age? How can you demand that I stay here, when I know the falsehoods, the snares, the chains and the nets, with which you trap our feeble wills? What have you done with my daughter? Who will keep me company in my lonely house? Who will look after me kindly in my decline?

Barbara: Then his complaint gets more specific, as he homes in on the particular vulnerability that characterizes the human condition: if we weren’t so attached, we would not suffer as much:

Actor 3 (Pleberio): O love, love, I did not think you could or would kill your subjects! I was wounded by you in my youth, and burned by your fires. Did you spare me then only repay me in my old age? I thought I was free of you when I reached the ripe old age of forty, happy with my dear wife and the fruit of our union, which you cut down today. Little did I think that you would visit upon the children your spite against the parents! Who made you so powerful? Who gave you a name so ill-conceived? For if you were Love, you would love your servants. If you loved them, you would not give them such sorrow. And if they were happy, they would not kill themselves, as my beloved daughter has!

You bear a sweet name, but your deeds are a bitter pill! Your rewards are capricious, and a law that does not treat all equally is an unjust law. We rejoice in your presence, but suffer at your hands. Fortunate are those whom you never knew or ignored entirely! Some have called you a god, who knows under what confusion, but God just kills all he has created, while you slay all your followers. You are the enemy of all reason, showering gifts on those who least serve you, until they too are snared in your mournful dance. Enemy to friends, friend to enemies, why do you observe no order, no reason?

Barbara: Finally, and perhaps most poignantly, he addresses Melibea directly:

Actor 3 (Pleberio): O my good companion, my daughter all broken to pieces! Why did you not let me prevent your death? Why did you take no pity on the mother you loved and cherished? Why such cruelty to your old father? Why did you forsake me, when I should have left you? Why did you leave me in such sorrow, sad and alone in this vale of tears?

Barbara: This is unquestionably a fallen world. And not just because people fall to their deaths. We’ve come a long way from the tantalizing prologue, the sexy titillation, to a deeply pessimistic view of things. Celestina the character may succeed in bringing the lovers together, but Celestina the book is perhaps even wilier, seducing us with its vision of a world full of eros only to give us thanatos at the end. And if death—Melibea’s meaningless death, to pose the question at its most poignant— is all there is, why choose conventional morality? Why not embrace love and laughter, however fleeting? These are existential questions, which assail us most forcefully in times of crisis and despair. For the modern reader in 2026, they are admittedly hard to take: when we seek the right ethical stance in the face of the climate emergency, or the foundering of democracy in the U.S., or the thousand slings and arrows of our daily news cycle, it can seem difficult to hold on to any sense of meaning–what, after all, is the point of it all? What is the right way to live, and what does it matter? And yet Pleberio’s lament comes at the end of a book so overflowing with energy and excess of all kinds, so resolutely unwilling to give up on life, that those final thoughts cannot be taken at the book’s last word. Before Pleberio’s anguish, there is Celestina’s insistence on doing what must be done, on living life to the fullest, morality be damned. With its refusal to come down on one side, or to make sense of a world as baffling as it is fallen, Celestina is perhaps most powerful in asking us to interrogate our own moral certainty.

Thank you.

(We hear audience applause.)