In La vida es sueñ;o and in plays which resemble it either formally or thematically (e.g. El gran teatro del mundo or the comedia En la vida todo es verdad y todo mentira) Calderón develops the paradox of illusion through a dramatic action that is global in its scope, archetypal in its suggestions, and sometimes straightforwardly allegorical as well. Elsewhere, I have called this the “encyclopedic” design of Calderón's theatre. Indeed, if we take Francis Fergusson's judgment that Dante's Divina Commedia, rather than any work of theatre, represents the single most accomplished version of the theatrical “idea” in Western culture, it is not difficult to see how a work like La vida es sueño can be said to embody this theatrical idea in compact form. In addition to the absorption of skepticism, which Calderón achieves through his use of the theatrum mundi trope, the play represents the grand arc of a complete action which writers ever since Aristotle have seen as the mark of accomplished drama. In this sense, La vida es sueño is Calderón's most Aristotelian play, the shape of its action being the exact reverse of that which Aristotle saw as appropriate for tragedy, but retaining the wholeness and order which characterize the wellmade plot.

La dama duende, which I shall discuss here, as well as El galán fantasma and El secreto a voces, which I shall discuss in the following sections, show a vastly different conception of dramatic form from La vida es sueño.