The Phoenix of Salamanca

Almost all the playwrights of the Golden Age used the theme of the woman dressed as a man in their plays, Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina, Antonio Mira de Amescua, Calderón, etc.
In The Phoenix of Salamanca (La Fénix de Salamanca), a swashbuckling comedy, from the first act the viewer knows that two of the main characters are two women disguised as men. Each one belongs to a different social class (lady and maid) and that their costumes obey different motives:

• Doña Mencía is looking for the man who promised her marriage and who later cheated on her by abandoning her.
• While Leonor, his maid, follows her mistress in her company with more or less will and no little fear.

Doña Mencía, much more daring and adventurous, fears anything or anyone. The garments of the military order of St. John that he has put on are a long black habit with a white cross on the chest, which give him all the security he needs to move forward.
So Doña Mencía decides to look for her beloved and does it in the only way that allows her to move freely and without giving explanations to anyone.
Doña Mencía, is a widow who has suffered a love disappointment. They have laughed at her, her honor has been sullied and as she has no male relatives to defend her and return her honor, a subject of capital importance in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, she decides to travel from Salamanca to Valencia and later to Madrid, to find Don Garcerán, the cause of her ills.
The Phoenix of Salamanca is a game of appearance and reality, a characteristic element in the comedies of the great playwrights of the Golden Age.

Day one

(Doña Mencía, in a long dress and habit of San Juan, and Leonor, her maid, come out as a capigorrón.)

Leonor: What? Aren’t you disappointed?

Mencía: My love is invincible.
Don’t tire me, Leonor.

Leonor: Your madness is extreme.
Without a doubt, Doña Mencía,
as these things go,
that must be Don Garcerán
your downfall and mine.
Six months you have left
of Salamanca after him,
and finding no trace of him,
to Valencia you ran;
and agora you want me to be
in Madrid. What nonsense!

Mencía: Oh, sweet friend! Road
In the footsteps of my faith.

Leonor: Well, haven’t you sworn a thousand times?
have no obligation?

Mencía: It’s true.

Leonor: What is your intention?
What gives you grief and care?
If you forgot, isn’t it custom?
of men forget?
If you don’t have to cry,
What will give you sorrow?

Mencía: Oh, my friend! My concern
Not so much the cause of love
how much the harsh rigor
of his fierce ingratitude.
The Night It Broke
that cruel, thousand loves
He told me, they were flowers,
that his absence withered.
And that strange move
and not thought out departure
It brings me and carries me lost
after a vain hope.

Leonor: Well, he warns that this suit
your claim does not assure;
Easier means procures.
Don’t face your lineage.

Fragment of the work