Such was one journalist's account, in the Anales de Madrid for 1652, of Calderón's Lafiera, el rayo,y lapiedra, a mythological extravaganza. It could have been any of Calderón's mythological showpieces. The exuberance, the massive attention to detail, the sheer weight of theatrical effect are remarkable. Only Broadway, Hollywood, or the Lido can provide any points of comparison. Indeed, Valbuena Prat said that Calderón's mythological plays were the genre “most akin to current tastes and sensibilities.” They are artificial, and shamelessly so, “the merest and purest artifice,” the elevation of artifice itself to its own subject matter, as one critic put it. They are virtuoso pieces of artificiality. Conventional in every way, they are brilliant crystallizations of Calderón's theatrical showmanship. They sustain an illusion that is so elaborate that it becomes, necessarily, self-conscious. Indeed, they are so artificial that even when they falter they come crashing down awash with brilliance.

Looked at from the point of view of action, motivation, or characterization, these plays are anomalous.