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This essay is an attempt to consider Cervantes¿s theater using the presuppositions of poetics and literary theory. I begin with the argument that Cervantes¿s theater is experimental. His efforts at renewal were, however, limited by the imperatives of classical poetics, codified by Aristotle, and the esthetic codes of the comedia nueva as formulated by Lope de Vega. From this viewpoint I attempt to examine the construction of character in Cervantes¿s plays by focusing on five basic characteristics, which in my view reflect the experimental nature of that theater: 1) the limitations on the character¿s selfexpression in the use of language: the conflict between decorum and polyphony; 2) the devaluation and subordination of the subject to the plot, as the structural and teleological principle underlying events; 3) the construction of character as a result of the desire to present a moral order that transcends the subject; 4) the reduction of the dramatic character to a logical archetype of forms of behavior; and 5) the denial of the character¿s subjective experience in the forms of dramatic language.
