Calderón Incorporated: Hands and Speech in Las tres justicias en una and El postrer duelo de España

Calderón's Las tres justicias en una and El postrer duelo de España both treat the nature of kingship, but also focus to a surprising degree on the use of hands, suggesting ways in which the body is incorporated into the dramatic texts. Recent writings in cognitive science point to a relationship between "precision hands and precision intelligence." Calderón seems to have intuited the ties between hand use and ability in speech; a character's poor use, or misuse, of a weapon is related to an incapacity to speak forthrightly. The monarchs in the two plays, as literal and figurative heads of state, resolve dilemmas by reincorporating the body with society, by establishing that the tactile is inseparable from the spoken recognition of objects and what they represent.