Celestina- Day 1

1. I found the discussion that Calisto and Sempronio have at the beginning of Act 1 to be quite amusing. As a matter of fact, I have been entertained throughout the entirety of the first two acts. The characters and their dialogue is so funny, that I find myself chuckling out loud. Anyway, I digress. When Calisto and Sempronio are talking, I do not interpret Calisto's illness to be one of love. Perhaps it is one of lust, but I would favor another theory over that one. I believe that Calisto is merely bored with his life. The reason I discard love as the cause of his melancholy stems from his reaction to a joke that Sempronio made about the people of Sodom. In response to this joke Calisto says:
"Damn you! You've made me laugh, a thing I hadn't expected to do this year."

This shows that Calisto doesn't care to cure his "love sickness", but that he would rather mope around and garner sympathy from his servants. This is similar to Romeo's reaction to Rosalind's scorn, where he locks himself away and makes people worry about him.

As to their discussion about women, I believe I found a reason for Sempronio's misogynistic view. In his discourse on the topic he says that women can't stop lusting for men and that this is their great weakness. I think that the reason he believes this is because he is in love with one of Celestina's whores. I do not think he realizes exactly what she is though, and because of this he finds all women to be like Elicia.