14 - Secret betrothals and secret marriages: El postrer duelo de España

Summary

All through the study of selected comedies by Calderón, we have seen that the thematic hinge on which the plays' intrigues turn is the question of secrecy. Seventeenth-century Spain had an obsessive fear of publicity difficult to understand in an age when it is no longer considered necessary to respect secrecy, even when one has given a solemn undertaking. The publication of state secrets that one was in duty bound to withhold has recently been exculpated by a jury in a court of law. In everyday affairs, everything possible is now done to ferret out and reveal in public details of the private lives of individuals in the public eye, especially if any scandal can attach to them. The seventeenth century held up in principle the duty of everybody to preserve the private lives of others from the taint of scandal. This was the social ideal; no doubt Spanish social life more often than not failed to observe this rule, but a moral rule it was.

The potential or actual scandal most often portrayed in Spanish literature are cases where a young girl has accepted a man as her future husband, under a solemn promise on his part, only to find this promise eventually broken. In literature, if the girl has spirit enough not to accept this social humiliation, and the ostracism that would follow if this fact were made public, she proceeds, dressed as a man, to search for her betrayer and force him to keep his word.