Early modern Spanish drama was born ‘playing the palace’ andcontinued to play in and for the palace throughout the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies. To say this is not to ignore the importance of the church andreligious theatre in its development, nor the continuity between medieval andearly modern religious drama as the Christmas and Easter tropes and the CorpusChristi processions evolved from late medieval to early modern forms. Nor is itto deny the significance of paratheatrical events and performance traditions inthe public plaza, the activities of jongleurs, mimes and Carnival that wouldground the rapid development of popular theatre in the sixteenth century. Infact, performance practices originating in the palace, church and plaza wouldcontinue to overlap in the seventeenth century. Comediaswritten for the public corrales (courtyard playhouses) wereperformed in noble and royal palaces, and palace plays were simplified forcorral performance. Religious theatre and Jesuit schooldrama nourished the taste for plays about saints; the autossacramentales (allegorical religious plays) written for performancein the plazas and streets of Madrid and other cities and towns for the CorpusChristi celebrations were sometimes repeated in corrales for apaying audience; and Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600–81) rewroteas autos several comedias he had crafted forcorral or palace performance. While recognising thoseoverlapping practices, this chapter focuses on palace theatres andparatheatrical practices staged by and for royal audiences. Describing themrequires retrospective reference to late medieval performances, when theseevents are first documented with terminology and motifs that persisted in theearly modern period.