Abstract

Four of Calderón’s capa y espada comedies, namely La dama duende, Con quien vengo, vengo, No hay burlas con el amor, El agua mansa, play with the dramatic themes of fraternal rivalry and divergences in personality and behaviour between sisters and/or brothers. From 1629 (when La dama duende was first performed) to 1642-1644 (supposed date of El agua mansa), the way these themes are handled by Calderón changes. Along with an analysis of these changes, we compare the whole corpus of Calderón’s mentioned comedies with two urban plays by Lope de Vega, El amigo hasta la muerte and La dama boba. While the generic context of their bringing to the stage the same themes of fraternal rivalry is also an absolutely comic one, yet El amigo hasta la muerte and La dama boba seem to present fraternal relationships more bitterly than Calderón does.