It is appropriate that this study of the relationship between fiction, deceit and morality in the plays of Ruiz de Alarcón should begin by considering the moral status of dramatic fiction itself. For, whatever may subsequently be said about the nature and moral legitimacy of the fictions, illusions and deceptions that are invented, created and practised by the characters within the plays themselves, we should not overlook the obvious fact that any comedia is itself a fiction, and that this mode of representation is no less open to moral scrutiny than the actions it portrays.

While the question of the moral legitimacy of the theatre in general has been the subject of critical discussion in the past, it has not been related directly to Alarcón’s work, despite the reputation he has acquired as a moralist. It is therefore worth considering how he accommodates aspects of the debate concerning the nature, use, and moral legitimacy of literary invention and theatrical representation (as it appeared in sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Spain) within his plays. By considering the passages in his work which deal explicitly with the theatre – accounts of visits to corrales in Madrid, a conversation about the merits and demerits of playwriting, and Alarcón’s own prologues and prefaces (with the aprobaciones by Vicente Espinel and Antonio de Mira de Amescua which precede them) – it is possible to form a preliminary view as to how Alarcón saw his own rôle as a writer of dramatic fictions, and to establish a set of parameters for the examination of his treatment of other forms of fiction, illusion and deception within the plays considered in the chapters which follow.

It is a well-known fact, but one worth repeating here, that literary fiction in general, and dramatic fiction in particular, were the subject of considerable debate during the Golden Age. The widespread dissemination of fictional and semi-fictional stories both in print and in the public theatres provoked many writers, most of them clerics (and some of them men of considerable influence), to oppose what they saw as a profane and dangerous innovation. As a result, there were repeated attempts throughout the period to persuade the civil authorities to impose limitations on the publication and performance of such works.