72 
Indiana University Studies 
The whole point of La dama boba is to show that love is re- 
sponsible for changing not only the nature of a person, but 
that it can actually make a simple-minded person reasonable 
and even intellectual. This idea does not exist at all in El 
desden con el desden. Any similarity between the two plays 
must be found in the fact that Nise, given up to studies, may 
have something in common with Diana, who is also a student. 
However, the result of Diana's studies is to make her disdain- 
ful of men, which is not at all the case with Nise, who, in love 
with Laurencio from the start, is willing to marry Liseo only 
when she is sure she cannot have Laurencio. The point in 
common between the two characters is limited to the initial 
resemblance of their both being studious. All of this plays a 
minor part in La dama boba. There is nothing of Liseo’s 
fickleness, nor of Laurencio’s mercenariness in El desden con 
el desden. 
Agreement with Alonso Cortes, in that La dama boba and 
El desden con el desden have nothing really in common, is 
inevitable. 
