In the plays discussed in the previous chapters the forms of deception most favoured by Alarcón are indicative of prudence rather than cunning; they are characterised by concealment rather than ostentation; and they are employed defensively, so as to reveal or confirm the truth about the moral character of others, rather than offensively, with the aim of projecting a flattering but illusory image of the deceiver himself. Moreover, in Alarcón’s plays, prudent deception is invariably concerned with the maintenance of honour-virtue, and the discovery of moral truths, whilst cunning is employed in the pursuit of worldly or sensual goals such as social advancement, riches, and sexual gratification. A circumspect and reasoned approach often proves sufficient to expose the deceptions practised by others, but Alarcón’s protagonists must also learn to overcome the inducement to self-deception presented by the allure of worldly attributes such as beauty, wealth and position, and to regard these as irrelevant or illusory, and this kind of desengaño requires a higher degree of wisdom.

The plays discussed in this chapter put forward a very similar view of deception, yet they do so by even more controversial means, since they present magical illusion as an extension of those varieties of deception (both prudent and cunning), practised elsewhere in Alarcón’s works.

The inclusion of magical elements in these plays has two principal consequences: (1) it increases the tension, present throughout Alarcón’s works, between the audience’s taste for those aspects of the dramatic performance which have an immediate sensory and imaginative appeal, and the moralists’ condemnation of such elements as detrimental to the common good, and (2) it focuses the play’s argument on the larger theme of desengaño, and the recognition of the illusory nature of worldly pleasures, rather than on the specific distinctions between cunning and prudent deception, lying and dissimulation. This is because, in a world distorted by magical illusion, it is all but impossible to ascertain the truth by empirical methods, with the result that, in these plays as in Calderón’s masterpiece La vida es sueño, right action comes to depend on reason, constancy and faith rather than on the evidence supplied by the senses.