Abstract

A comedy without long runs in «romance» like «relaciones», name used by contemporary people, would have been hard to fi nd. The management of the information which has to be provided to the other characters and to the audience is one of its main functions; but without doubt there are many other reasons apart from the plot that explain its being, ranging from the celebration of certain events of real life to the brilliance of the recitative capacity of the actors, or the audiences’ pleasure of listening to recitations of verses. Its use generated abundant topics, which were revealed by the characters themselves through-out metatheatrical commentaries. The set of «relaciones» found in Calderón’s comedies have been organised depending on their referencing to different factors: transmitter, receiver, context, content (themes and motifs), form and extratheatrical relations. The aim of this work is to facilitate an approach to the concept that the agents of Golden Age theatre had about «relaciones» and to gain further insights into Calderón’s comic resources.