Catalan Review

Abstract

A relevant virtue of Francesc Fontanella’s Tragicomèdia d’amor, firmesa i porfia, one of the more important Catalan baroque dramatic plays, is the combination of serious tone with amusement and irony. The latter characteristics are quite obvious in the comic characters of the play, especially in Cassòlio, who is stigmatized as being a “macarrònic singular” because of the level of pedantry he shows by using Latin words throughout. Nevertheless, a good number of the Latin expressions that the author has this character voice come from Virgil’s Aeneid, books III, IV, and V. This fact corroborates the knowledge that Fontanella had about the Mantuan poet, as it exalts the comical side of the play before the educated audience of its time.