By means of a series of asymmetrical framing devices, the theatrical text of La gran sultana decenters the nationalist discourse of captivity and generates a conjunction of opposing values with regard to culture, religion, and sex. The dislocation of the cultural perspective and the concomitant substitution of moral authority manages to produce a comic effect without descending to the burlesque, through the deft use of the historical background and the linguistic-visual frame of admiratio. The première of the Cervantine text in 1992 very appropriately celebrates an opening towards the Other in a time of lamentable cultural polarizations