It is a commonplace to affirm that the Renaissance recuperated classical mythology. But like many topoi, it does not stand closer scrutiny. Throughout the Middle Ages classical mythology was utilized for a variety of reasons, for instance to claim an origin – in fables that proclaimed Aeneas as the founder of Rome, or Hercules as the ancestor of the Spanish monarchy. It also survived through Catholic festivities and allegorical interpretation. It is true to say, however, that the recuperation of classical mythology in Spanish letters as a vehicle for satire and parody was particularly effective during the reign of the Philips. Baroque wit replaced gods and heroes with dwarfs. If during the Renaissance man was the toy of gods, Baroque vision transformed gods into the toys of man.

The success of theatre as a popular art form meant that by the seventeenth century classical mythology was widely available in Spain even for the illiterate, who had access to the corrales. Mythology was a frequent topic even in entremeses, like Quiñones de Benavente’s Los planetas, where he mocks cuckolds as Cervantes had in El viejo celoso, and, more relevant to my purpose here, in his use of the raw material of mythology in his Laberinto de amor.

Indeed, the labyrinth motif was a pervasive presence in Hispanic Baroque writing. The tense relationship between monstrosity and sentimentality that drew writers to it seemed to encapsulate the contradictory dualities of the age. This chapter will offer a brief glimpse of the motif’s symbolic possibilities through exploration of the labyrinth topos in the drama of Tirso de Molina, Calderón de la Barca, Lope de Vega and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.

Allegorical modulation: Tirso and Calderón

Mythology was a useful tool to prove that pagans had an intuitive knowledge of Christ, and thus the ‘Bible of the pagans’, as Alfonso X labelled Ovid’s Metamorphosis, was widely exploited. Both Tirso and Calderón, for instance, re-elaborated Ovid’s Metamorphosis’s Book VIII with a religious purpose. In El laberinto de Creta, Tirso’s labyrinth symbolizes the blindness of humanity, and stands for life itself; it connotes the perils of our decisions. Above all, it represents the world before the birth of Christ.