Abstract

In many Calderón’s tragic plays, a room or a hall can turn into a space of violence, if locked or opened against the will of the character (mostly a woman) who lives in it. That is what we can observe in La gran Cenobia, El médico de su honra, El pintor de su deshonra, El mayor monstruo del mundo, La vida es sueño. In comic plays, on the contrary, dramatic situations like these use to turn out well, thanks to ingenious solutions or favorable chance: it is what happens in Amor, honor y poder and La dama duende; whereas the case of No hay cosa como callar confirms the generic ambiguity of this play.

Abstract

A current tendency in Spanish Golden Age theatre studies is dramatic segmentation. In this sense, we must emphasize Marc Vitseʼs methodology, which suggests structuring the play according to the versification changes. We are going to put into practice this theory with a work by an unknown playwright: Renegado, rey y mártir by Cristóbal de Morales. We will verify that versification does actually help when dividing and hierarchising the different moments of the play. At Renegado, rey y mártir violence is important due to the fact that it causes the strophic changes and structures the plot.