The pastoral ethic is that set of ameliorative principles in La devotión de la cruz (Devotion to the Cross) and El alcalde de Zalamea (The Mayor of Zalamea) working to assuage the intolerable burden of fear and vengeance exacted by the autocratic honor code. These principles receive maximum dramatic range, with the happiest consequences, in The Phantom Lady. The issue is not so much the honor of a woman in danger of losing it, though this hazard is real and accounts for much of the play's dramatic interest. It is rather the clandestine yet clearly approved means by which a lady of rank asserts her rights as a woman in love. Without knowing the odierwise fatal role of honor in Calderonian drama, a casual reader would miss these positive implications of the theme so tfiat the play would seem little more than an auspicious forerunner of Restoration comedy, which indeed it influenced.