LAUSR

On an intertextual level, Leonor de la Cueva’s only extant comedia has often been to compared to the biblical story of King David, Bathsheba and Uriah the Hittite, since her king, Filiberto, sends the beloved of Armesinda, Don Juan, to war in order to remove him as a rival. However, because of the threats of both rape and suicide as integral to the plot of Cueva’s work, La firmeza en la ausencia can also be read intertextually as incorporating elements from the story of the rape of Lucretia, widely known, represented and reinterpreted by writers and painters from the early modern period. There is ample precedence for combining themes from these biblical and classical stories in other comedias that served as models for Leonor de la Cueva. Lope de Vega did so most notably in Peribanez y el Comendador de Ocana, to mention one of several examples. Additionally, these comedias often include as part of the trial of virtue the betrayal of other female characters who attempt to persuade the protagonist to surrender herself sexually to an aggressor of superior social status. This article studies this tradition and how Leonor de la Cueva has adapted these themes to present a dramatic presentation of unwavering female virtue.