La obra, entonces, nos invita a interpretarla como comentario hacia las translatio imperii et studii, dos conceptos que son encarnados por Cristóbal Lugo, tanto como estudiante y figura religiosa, al trasladarse al Nuevo Mundo. En efecto su victoria nos guía al segundo acto, donde existe una de las escenas más excéntricas del teatro cervantino: una conversación entre Curiosidad y Comedia que, entre otras cosas, adscribe el traslado del espacio de la obra de España a México a las nuevas prácticas del teatro. Sin embargo, no es hasta el tercer acto donde su santidad se confirma. Comenta que: "In El rufián dichoso Cruz's control of rhetoric to fabricate and authenticate his role as a religious man, as well as the capacity of speech to fill the temporal spaces and cement the gaps in the play, together foreground the dynamic and active properties of language" (120). Both novels were stimulated, far more than criticism has acknowledged, by the geographical excitement of a New World.
Cervantes’s El rufián dichoso (1615), a hagiographic play, is his only work that partially takes place in Mexico. The protagonist, known as Cristóbal Lugo during his student life in Spain, travels to Mexico where his name changes to Cristóbal Cruz. The play includes a conversation between two allegorical characters, Comedia and Curiosidad, in which Comedia famously compares theater to a map. Conceiving of the play as a map justifies the change of space, but it also links the play to cartography. The map that Cervantes creates in this play is best understood within the context of evangelization. Hence, this essays argues that the protagonist embodies the notions of translatio imperii et studii mirrored not only in his characterization but also in his movement from Spain to Mexico