“As Greek tragedy ” says a Spanish writer, “was composed from the crumbs that fell from Homer's table, so the Spanish drama owed its earliest forms to La Celestina (1499).”

Fernando de Rojas' tragi-comedy – which has also been called “a novel in dialogue” – runs to about three hundred pages in the James Mabbe translation, here adapted to the stage by Eric Bentley in a five-act, 93-page version.

The central and pervasive situation is a simple one: a dirty old woman is helping a courtly young gentleman to seduce a girl. The wonder of the thing lies in the art with which Fernando do Rojas derives, from such commonplace materials, a towering tragedy – or rather, tragi-comedy.