This article describes the address system of the Spanish Golden Age, which uses the pronouns TU, VOS and VUESTRA MERCED, via the analysis of different plays, and attempts to interpret this system on the basis of (politeness) theories advanced by, in chronological order, Brown and Gilman, Lakoff, Brown and Levinson, Hilll et al. and Ide. The speaker's choice of pronouns is shown to depend on the socially encoded polite rules of the period (Ide's DISCERNMENT) or on the VOLITIONAL ASPECT of politeness (Hill et al.) Thus in Spanish SOLIDARITY and POWER SEMANTICS (Brown and Gilman) are working simultaneously, yet applied to different interactional contexts.