How Many Sisters Had Celestina?: The Function of the Invisible Characters

Abstract

Thirteen characters speak in the Comedia de Calisto y Melibea, seven of them in Act 1 and six in the acts that are indisputably the work of Fernando de Rojas; a fourteenth, Centurio, is added in the Tragicomedia. Others are clearly present without speaking, and although it is obvious that the great majority of the speakers are more important than the great majority of the non-speakers, the frontier between speech and silence does not exactly correspond to the frontier between major and minor significance. Most notably, Crito, who contributes to Act 1 the words Plhceme. No te congojes , matters little in comparison with the Devil s role in Acts 3 and 4 (and, I have suggested, in later acts), or with the equally silent Traso s part in causing Calisto s death in Act 19.