Abstract

This article analyzes and characterizes the presence of cloak and sword episodes or incidents («lances de capa y espada») in the limited corpus of Calderon’s five comedias which have a hagiographic content. The peculiarities of each of the comedias will be observed in relation to the way in which the plot and subplot are constructed from the scheme of the episodes that make the main dramatic conflict, with a religious character, more human and complex.These characteristic elements of the cloak and sword plays, once introduced in a comedia of saints, transform some of its typical aspects: they reduce their comic or playful nature and they are generally driven by divine or infernal forces, like in the two famous scenes with the veiled lady in El mágico prodigioso and the muffled figure in El purgatorio de San Patricio.