The plays I analysed in Chapter 2 featured characters who have suddenly become aware that to continue to live social life in the fashion that they have been used to, and that they were instructed and educated to, will mean a sort of death, whether physical or spiritual. The reaction to this personal crisis, which I have characterized as reflex, involves a hurried decision to veil one's old role with a new, invented one. This action is antisocial because it disrupts the smooth communication which is a necessary feature of life lived in a group. Such communication relies on outward appearance being an authentic sign of what is deemed normal, on speech approximating to social truth. The ideal ordered world is free from misrepresentation and pretence, from fiction and troublesome abandonment of the social role dictated by those who wield social power. And since Golden-Age society is patriarchal, any social disorder is a threat to patriarchy. In Marta la piadosa and Los locos de Valencia, we are not presented with characters who think through a social rebellion (with the possible exception of Erífila's initial decision to elope, which anyway backfires), but with individuals who discover, almost by accident, the potential benefits of (antisocial) role-play, and then exploit them to their advantage. However, in the two plays to be analysed in this chapter, Calderón's La dama duende (1629) and Lope's La discreta enamorada (1606), the eponymous women utilize role-play to escape spiritual destruction in a more developed and strategic fashion. Their intentions are positive and forward-looking from the outset, rather than defensive. The comedy follows their chaotic machinations to their ordered close. These women have begun to think their rebellions through and exploit patriarchal predictability to the full.

The significant distinction between the two pairs of plays studied in Chapters 2 and 3 might be elucidated by differentiating between experience and naïvety, between prior recognition of the power of acting and simply reacting.