This is the first edition of the Celestina that adapts the printing conventions established for previous editions of classic playwrights such as Plautus. The change consists in preceding every speech with the name of the character as in a modern printing of a theatre play. Until this point all the editions of the Celestina had been printed as continuous text in which the names of the characters and their speeches followed one another as if it were prose. Thus, Ulloa’s editing of this edition of 1553, as he explains in this introduction, meant that the Celestina could reflect for the first time, as was the original author’s intention, that his work was a ‘play’ not a ‘story’. However, the way that the Celestina was originally presented in earlier printings still has a bearing on the perception of the Celestina as a story and not as play.
The Celestina is probably the most celebrated literary work in the Spanish language before the publication of the Don Quijote, “the first connected long story with a complete plot written in modern literature” (Maggs, cat. 495); it marks the transition between medieval and renaissance literature. The title “Celestina” instead of “Tragicomedia” would only appear in 1595.
Javier San José Lera, ‘Teatro y texto en el primer renacimiento español. Del teatro al manuscrito e impreso’, Studia Aurea, 7, 2013: 303-338.
Provenance: the collection of Kenneth Rapoport; his sale, Swann Galleries, New York.
Palau 51152. This edition not in Toda.
