Anselmo

Anselmo is a wealthy young man from Leandra’s village who seeks her hand alongside Eugenio. After Leandra disappears with Vicente de la Roca and is later confined to a convent, Anselmo leaves the village with Eugenio and becomes a shepherd, making his life in the valley a sustained lament for their separation. His restrained focus on absence distinguishes him from the valley’s other disappointed lovers, whose varied complaints turn Leandra into the center of a collective pastoral obsession.

Identity and Suitors

Anselmo is presented by Eugenio, who tells the story of Leandra, as his rival in the effort to marry her. Both men are from the same town, wealthy, young, and regarded as suitable matches. Leandra’s father, unable to choose between them, decides to let his daughter choose according to her inclination, while insisting that the choice should be among good prospects. He does not reveal which suitor Leandra preferred; instead, he delays both men with references to her youth and with words that neither commit him nor dismiss them. Anselmo’s place in the story is therefore established through an unresolved courtship rather than a confirmed betrothal.

From Courtship to the Valley

The contest for Leandra’s hand is overtaken by her encounter with Vicente de la Roca, a soldier who returns to the village in conspicuously gaudy clothing and jewelry. Leandra leaves her father’s house with him, taking her father’s valuables, after Vicente promises to bring her to Naples. She is later found in a cave in the mountains: Vicente has taken her possessions and abandoned her, while she maintains that he did not violate her honor. Her father removes her from public view and places her in a convent in a nearby town.

Leandra’s disappearance changes the lives of both suitors. Anselmo and Eugenio leave the village together and settle in the valley, where Anselmo tends a large flock of sheep and Eugenio a large herd of goats. Their private sorrow becomes a local pattern: many of Leandra’s other admirers also come to the mountains and take up shepherding, so that the valley seems transformed into a pastoral Arcadia. The landscape’s rocks, streams, and shaded places become settings for repeated laments, and Leandra’s name echoes through them.

Relationships and Narrative Role

Anselmo’s bond with Eugenio is defined by shared loss and a revealing difference in how each interprets it. Eugenio says that Anselmo complains only of being separated from Leandra, whereas Eugenio turns his disappointment into broad denunciations of women’s inconstancy and broken promises. Anselmo’s narrower grief gives his response a measure of restraint: he does not, in Eugenio’s account, use Leandra’s conduct to make a general case against women.

Music provides Anselmo with his characteristic means of expression. He plays the rebeck with notable skill and sings verses that display his ingenuity, making artful song a counterpoint to the valley’s more scattered accusations and praises. The shepherds’ collective fixation is itself contradictory: they condemn or excuse Leandra, praise her beauty or attack her character, and even some lament jealousy despite never having spoken with her. Anselmo’s solitary complaint about separation stands out within this chorus, while his presence helps show how one woman’s story has drawn a whole community of disappointed suitors into an invented pastoral life.