Abstract

Even though the experts on Calderón do agree that Coquín, a character of El médico de su honra, is an unsuccessfully comical character drowned by the tragic atmosphere of the play, our analysis of the character’s jokes, especially the one about the lady’s beard, reveals that this is only true with respect to the last part of the play. Concerning the rest, Coquín is an extremely funny character, especially in his challenge with don Pedro de Castilla and the already mentioned joke, as is shown throughout the satirical context of the lady’s beard that we reveal, including a probable source of the joke in Lope de Vega’s Rimas de Tomé de Burguillos (1634).