The careful comparison of Italian novellas with their Spanish versions reveals that Spanish authors employ the rhetoric of the fictitious case to test the validity of the legal grounds created by the new set of rules introduced by the Council of Trent. Although, as Quintilian explains, forensic discourse sometimes overlaps with the ceremonial discourse of blame or praise (3.4.16), even those Spanish novellas that are closer to the latter exhibit a tendency to modify Italian originals in light of Spanish laws. Moreover, most of the Spanish novellas exploit the possibilities of anticipating, and refuting, the objections of an absent opponent which is a strategy that the fictitious case employs. Like legal cases, these novellas follow a forensic rhetorical arrangement (exordium, narration, proposition, proofs, and peroration). In the case of the Spanish novella, sometimes the narratio is presented through the artificial order prescribed by Horace for poetry and discussed in detail by Cicero and Quintilian, in their respective discussions of forensic rhetoric.

BURIED ALIVE: TELLING THE STORY OF ROMEO AND JULIET IN POST-TRIDENTINE SPAIN

Agreda y Vargas’s version of Bandello’s ‘Romeo et Giulietta’ represents an evident use of legal documentation in adapting a fictional narration to Spanish law. Aurelio and Alexandra (his Romeo and Giulietta) follow every precept of the Council of Trent, although carrying out a secret marriage. Furthermore, they manage to get a legal marriage through the Church without the complicity of Friar Lorenzo. In the Spanish version, two servants help the lovers in plotting their marriage and in obtaining the sleeping potion. The criticism of the misuse of confession by a clergyman is, therefore, totally erased, sidestepping the objections of the Inquisition. Moreover, since the two servants escape in order to save their lives after the death of the lovers, leaving no witness to the events (Friar Lorenzo is not available to narrate the misfortunes of Romeo and Giulietta), the narrator reveals at the end of the story that the narration, as a forensic statement of facts, has been reconstructed from documentary sources or non-artificial proofs (a marriage certificate, letters, etc.).

Reading Bandello’s novella (1554) in light of Agreda y Vargas’s version (1620) reveals that, even though the Italian author states in his exordium that the purpose of his tragic story is to teach young people to learn to govern themselves with moderation (24–25), his narratio was also read as an implied criticism of the Church.