The phrase, “classical theatre as it ought to be performed,” at first sight smacks of all that Peter Brook's notion of “Deadly Theatre” suggests: theatre that “approaches the classics from the viewpoint that somewhere, someone has found out and defined how the play should be done” (Empty 14). On the one hand, such deadliness implies repetition – “old formulae, old methods, old jokes, old effects” (36); and on the other, it connotes theatre that is “done by good actors in what seems like the proper way – they look lively and colourful, there is music and everyone is all dressed up, just as they are supposed to be in the best of classical theatres” (10). The painful result is theatre that is at once “excruciatingly boring” (10) and “depressingly active” (37). From another perspective, however, to speak of “classical theatre as it ought to be performed” is to recognize wherein lies the power of such plays. Brook's observations with regard to Shakespeare are equally applicable to early modern Spanish theatre:

Brook adds that “the freedom of movement of the Elizabethan theatre was not only a matter of scenery”:

These two factors – “the absence of scenery” on stage (78) and the ability of a play to “pass through many stages of consciousness” (80) – not only characterize Shakespeare's theatre but also help to account for the success of José Luis Alonso's production in 1988 of Calderón's El alcalde de Zalamea with the Compañía Nacional de Teatro Clásico.