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La comedia cortesana La firmeza en el ausencia, unica de la poetisa y dramaturga espanola Leonor de la Rua Cueva y Silva, aborda la milenaria tradicion misogina sobre la inconstancia de la mujer. Esta tradicion, originalmente atribuida a Aristoteles, cobra vigor con Juvenal y llega a su cuspide en los siglos XIV y XV con autores como Giovanni Boccaccio, Jean de Meung, Pere Torrellas, Luis Ramirez de Lucena y Fernando de Rojas. Sin embargo, es retada por Plutarco en la edad clasica y, posteriormente, por autores como Christine de Pizan, Alfonso Martinez de Toledo, Alvaro de Luna y Juan Rodriguez de la Camara. Otrosi, aunque la firmeza moral de la mujer es un tema central de esta obra, el drama versa tambien sobre el cambio humoral y moral del rey: de caprichoso a responsable. Por lo tanto, La firmeza en el ausencia es, ademas de una pieza dramatica profeminista, una de valor etico y politico, similar a las que forman parte de la tradicion politica del speculum principum. (ARL)

Cervantes’s “El coloquio de los perros,” has been judged as an independent work from the alleged first part, “El casamiento enganoso,” as a continuation of the latter, or indeed as the end of a narrative process that encompasses in part the other Novelas ejemplares. The (re)apparition in 2013 of Gines Carrillo Ceron’s “Novela o coloquio que tuvieron Cipion y Berganza, perros que llaman de Mahudes, segunda parte de la que hizo Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra en sus novelas” (1635) demonstrates that a second colloquy would be necessarily different from the first. Since this last work does not retake the fabula of “El casamiento enganoso,” both colloquies, hence, seem to be independent of the “Casamiento” and, to some extent, even of the series that encompasses the Novelas ejemplares, a literary work seemingly still in transitu.

To this day, criticism of El medico de su honra has not emphasized sufficiently the genre to which this play belongs, the dramatic functions of the characters, and the ambiguous imagery which, contrary to current opinion, would seem to indicate that Dona Mencia (like the wives of the other honor plays) is both guilty and innocent of the social upheaval which endangers the social order of King Pedro's court. To better understand what honor plays seem to portray, the author attempts to deconstruct the usual bilateral positions (if not quilty, innocent; if not Christian, pagan, etc.) which have obfuscated our vision of the tragic in Calderon's theater.