SOURCE: Hart, Thomas R. “Characterization: Casandra.” In Gil Vicente: Casandra and Don Duardos, pp. 49-63. London England: Grant & Cutler, 1981.

In the following excerpt, Hart maintains that in the play Casandra Vicente privileges character development over plot events.

A. A. Parker has observed that the Spanish comedia of the seventeenth century is “essentially a drama of action and not of characterization … The plot and not the characters is the primary thing” (7, 3-4). Our two early sixteenth-century plays by Gil Vicente work rather differently. Dámaso Alonso has contrasted the “lenta matización psicológica” in Vicente's treatment of Don Duardos and Flérida with “los cambios bruscos e infundamentados del teatro de Lope”, suggesting that “aquí, en la expresión, por matices sumamente delicados y pequeños, de las variaciones de un alma es donde está el mayor valor dramático de la Tragicomedia” (1, 26). The “lenta matización psicol...