This dissertation investigates two areas rarely treated in Early Modern studies. First, it explores the origins, functions and importance of the entremes as a performance genre historically relegated to what Victor Turner has called the "liminal" spaces of social and scholarly discourse. These marginalized places of ambiguity in between one space and another provide the artist with a less restrictive creative setting in which to explore the otherwise difficult and even unmentionable social themes. Literally placed in between acts of the comedia performance experience, as well as chronologically placed in between the medieval pageant theater and the emerging early modern theater houses, the entremes serves as an entertaining breed of performance monster, building upon a thematic foundation "betwixt and between" acceptable and objectionable forms of theater.Second, the dissertation examines in detail the 12 lesser-known entremeses of Francisco de Quevedo as examples of liminality in the development of early modern theater practices. Specifically, the study analyzes these theater pieces as they subscribe to three categories of cardinal sin: desires of the ego (pride, wrath and sloth); desires of ownership (greed and envy); and desires of the body (lust and gluttony).As a result, this work hopes to demonstrate the aesthetic value of the interlude and the ways in which Quevedo's various manifestations of this liminal genre, based heavily on the construct of sin, both complement and contradict the model of the entremes as established by his predecessors.