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The public enactment of secrecy is part of the Spanish Golden Age culture. This article presents a research project, which pursues three objectives: 
A study of secrecy as a core characteristic of Spanish Golden Age culture, on the basis of historiographical studies, sources and cultural theories of secrecy.
 A study of Calderonian comedies of secrecy in the context of Golden Age theatre.
 A case study of the comedy El secreto a voces, including a critical edition that also explores the aesthetics of secrecy and the history of early staging in Madrid and Vienna.
 With this threefold approach we aim at a deeper understanding of both Calderón’s originality and of the secret patterns of Baroque culture.

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Women play a very important role in the Spanish comedy of the 17th century. Female characters control the play action, manipulating the rest of the characters in order to reach their goals. Plenty of these comedies reflect the opposition between the beautiful woman and the discreet woman, who both fight to marry the gallant they are in love with. Calderón uses this thematic structure in some of his comedies, in which discretion always wins. 

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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.