This book is a critical study of Calderón. My purpose is to see across a broad spectrum of his work a variety of perspectives on the use and the limits of illusion; each chapter takes up one or another reflex of this formal and thematic concern. Because this is a critical study, I have tried throughout to judge Calderón's theatre according to criteria consistent with the premises implicit in it. Any reader is likely to be struck by Calderón's preoccupation with illusion, but that in and of itself says little: it does not, for instance, tell us how we might distinguish Calderón from Shakespeare, Racine, or Corneille, other dramatists whom I will discuss; nor does it point up the contrast between Calderón and Cervantes, who found the play of illusion to be so central to the making of Don Quixote. In seeking the distinctive features of Calderón's engagement with the problems of illusion, I have found it essential to take the theatrical aspect of his work into account. In ways I shall explain, this representational feature of his work is of crucial importance in determining the place of illusion in it.

Seen from one angle, Calderón's entire production is his attempt, as a Christian dramatist, to deal with the fact that he must professionally embrace illusion, which morally he would abjure. Thus there is a tension between theatrical form and the themes of illusion, but we can judge his work on how deeply this tension is felt, on how insightful Calderón's poetic perceptions of it are, and on how successfully it is brought to the stage.