Abstract: In a few early modern Spanish and French plays, the playwright on stage represents the dramatist and the divine author, and thus addresses the fundamental ambiguity between theological and dramatic authority. In Calderón’s El gran teatro del mundo, the appearance on stage of the autor expresses through analogy the work of God in his creation, while in Lope de Vega’s and Jean de Rotrou’s adaptations of the martyr of saint Genesius, the playwright seems to be competing with the divine author.
