Las Bizarrias de Belisa by Lope de Vega

 Las Bizarrias de Belisa by Lope de Vega


 

What on earth (but I was tempted to say- the hell) does this lady want?

-          Las bizarrias indeed!

From the start, Belisa is not the kind of heroine that I like to read about.

She rejects suitors for the flimsiest of reasons, this one has a beard, that one has a hair I do not like and so on.

The title refers to Belisa’s manner of dealing with life and people.

I listened to an adaptation which is called “Capriciile Fenisei”, with George Constantin in one of the roles.

Having the greatest actor that I know in this play made me listen to a play that I would have otherwise stopped in its tracks.

There may be some fun in it, for those who enjoy a farce and role playing.

In fact, I need to correct somehow the last statement:

-          We all play roles and games

One of the classics of psychology is the book Game People Play by Eric Berne.

Several conclusions can be drawn from that book and an important one is that we all play Games. One example is “

-          “ if it weren’t for you”

We all tend to blame others, the spouse in particular for something we have not accomplished in career, hobbies, passions and more. In fact, we choose a partner that will obstruct and make us forget about something we do not want anyway.

In the Bizarrias, there are all kinds of changes of situation and perspective:

-          The master loves a slave, the mistress another

-          People turn out to have different identities.

Perhaps there is a more important and deeper dimension of the play.

I wish it were so and the story could be analyzed form a more interesting angle.

We could look at the barriers that love has to overcome, how “opposites attract „and “love conquers all”.

But I am afraid that the play is rather shallow and we are talking about a light comedy where some morals and the superficiality we all show may be in focus at times, but it is rather forgettable.

Yes there may be some lessons to be drawn- do not be snobbish, look beyond the cover and the label-

If a person is a servant or a slave it does not always mean that this is not an intelligent, kind and worthy human being.

Having said that, we have another psychology classic- Blink by Malcolm Gladwell that argues that we have “The Power of Thinking Without Thinking” and in “the blink of an eye” we can make a judgment call, which is pretty much the same that we would pass after six months.

I tend to believe that:

-          What you see is what you get- most of the time.

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