Abstract

This article tries to explain some of Calderón’s basic comic skills and the tools employed to achieve his dramatic effects, dealing especially with chance. After a short introduction about different chance theories, it explains how polyvalent references, wrong identifications and chance create Calderón’s comic plays. The investigation finishes with a brief mention of the probability calculus in the seventeenth century and concludes that Calderón’s comic plays offer the possibility to experience esthetically the ambiguity of chance.