Recuperating Ruíz de Alarcón: Los empeños de un engaño as Source Text for Calderón de la Barca and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

This paper considers a little-studied play, Los empeños de un engaño by Juan Ruíz de Alarcón, as a possible source text for both Calderón de la Barca’s Los empeños de un acaso and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’s Los empeños de una casa. The phonetic similarities of the latter two titles have relegated Ruíz de Alarcón’s unique drama to obscurity. However, the unusual details of both the Alarcón and Sor Juana pieces demonstrate the relative freedom the two New World authors had in composing unique versions of the capa y espada genre, particularly when compared to their peninsular counterpart. Although all three plays are similar in title, plot, and even character names, they are ultimately unique pieces that speak to the specific conditions under which each of their authors composed and staged their work. It is also the author’s wish that this paper, along with the recent discovery that the play La monja alferez was penned by Alarcón and not Pérez de Montalbán (Vega García-Luengos, in: Cañal, González (eds) Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz y el teatro novohispano, Ediciones de la Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, 2021), will inspire more scholars to consider the Mexican dramaturg’s oeuvre beyond his better-known pieces such as La verdad sospechosa or Las paredes oyen.