La dama duende, composed around 1629, is recognized as one of the most sophisticated comedies in Calderón’s oeuvre and, at the same time, serves as a masterful synthesis of the modes, tensions, and preoccupations characteristic of courtly society during the Spanish Golden Age. The play is set in a meticulously codified Madrid—a city characterized by surveilled streets, multiple doorways, interconnected chambers, and domestic hierarchies as rigid as they are permeable—that transforms both urban and domestic environments into a theatrical laboratory. In this space, concepts of honor, liberty, desire, and spectacle are tested, transgressed, and negotiated. As Fausta Antonucci observes in her critical edition for Crítica (1999), this carefully constructed scenography functions not merely as a background, but as the very driver of the action and as a privileged instrument through which Calderón explores themes of...
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Citation: Dominicci-Buzo, José. "La dama duende". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 05 January 2026 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=32963, accessed 09 June 2026.]
