The seventeenth century has been labelled ‘the century of Calderón’. There is some validity in this designation, not simply because his dramatic output spanned some six decades, but because his theatre is capacious in its engagement with social, moral, religious, intellectual and literary preoccupations of his time. Much within his theatre is obviously common dramatic currency, not least the social and political values largely accepted (honour; patriarchy; monarchy) and the simplified social structure employed (the hierarchy of king–nobility–peasants). Whilst it would be naïve not to recognise that recurrent themes are, at the very least, indicative of Calderón's way of thinking and writing as a dramatist, and thus that they may indicate a personal worldview, I will sidestep the question of a personal worldview to focus instead on the worldview presented through his theatre: a Calderonian worldview rather than, more baldly, Calderón's worldview. To do so, I will map the contours and concerns of the Calderonian world by exploring some of the key concepts that define his dramatic world, though I will not be concerned here with the ways these did or did not evolve over the course of his career. The clusters I will focus on are: (1) Love: fineza [gallantry], honour, jealousy; (2) Agency: fate, predestination, free will, horoscopes, Providence, fortune; (3) Instability: fortune, constancy, transience; and (4) Knowledge: perception, doubt, certainty and uncertainty, self-knowledge. Underpinning or intertwined with most of these is the issue of power and control.
Blue has noted that the title of possibly Calderón's first work, Amor, honor y poder [Love, Honour and Power, 1623], encapsulates themes that interest him across his career: love, honour, power. Love, alongside two concepts (partly) associated with it, jealousy and honour, certainly drives or informs most plots, even when not their primary subject. The three are the constant of male–female interaction in the Calderonian world, and given the intensely homosocial nature of early modern society, of many male–male interactions.
Before marriage (largely the preserve of the comedies), Calderón's noblewomen are valued for their beauty and their wit (ingenio), female quick-wittedness – ex-emplified by Ángela in La dama duende [The Phantom Lady] or Lisarda in Peor está que estaba [It's Worse than it Was] – being the driver of his fast-paced comedies.