| Summary: | <p>Calderón adapted Barclay’s best-selling political romance <em>Argenis</em> (Paris, 1621) with the title <em>Argenis y Poliarco</em> sometime between 1626 and 1636, the date of its first recorded performance. It was first printed in 1637, in the <em>Segunda Parte</em> of his plays. In comparison with other works from that collection, such as <em>El médico de su honra</em> or the two <em>comedias palaciegas</em>, <em>El mayor encanto amor</em> and <em>El galán fantasma</em>, <em>Argenis y Poliarco</em> is virtually unknown, with only a few critical studies and one recent edition by Alicia Vara López (2015). This edition, coupled with the renewed interest in Barclay’s neo-Latin romance, should inspire critical reconsideration of a play that appeared in a transformative moment in Calderón’s career.</p><p>After reviewing the scholarship on how Calderón transformed the romance into his distinctive theatrical idiom, I investigate the play’s political meaning and challenge the view that <em>Argenis y Poliarco</em> is above all a palatine play about love. While it is true that Calderón simplifies the plot, by eliminating or pushing offstage the overtly political action and by cutting Barclay’s disquisitions on good government, I argue that the political element is not suppressed. It is, rather, recast in theatrical terms. Calderón’s skillful stagecraft constitutes a dramatic representation of a European political order marked by ambiguity, plurality and contingency, where the destiny of a state is determined in large measure by what happens beyond its borders. </p>
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