Abstract

This essay intends analyzing the disguise of madness in Calderón’s La Cisma de Ingalaterra, not only as a concrete element of the performance that contributes to Pasquin’s connotation, but also as a dramatic metaphor that is used by Calderón in order to bring on stage the subversion of order and the unmasking of fiction and hypocrisy. concept, whose dramatic construction can be established from symbolic functions of costume. Second, it analyses Pasquin’s clownish aspect, his acting like a theatrical sign of multiple meanings, because it translates a fictional madness that expresses itself at a visual, a verbal and a mimic level at the same time. Moreover, the article deals with some scenic sources based on the concept of inversion, starting from Pasquin’s fiction of madness that, on one hand, is similar to the emblematic figures of the ««fou sage» and the «seeing-blind», and that, on the other hand, points out Enrique’s loss of wisdom.