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"What is life? A frenzy. What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a fiction; and the greatest good is fleeting, for all life is a dream, and even dreams are but dreams." That is the haunting lesson learned by Prince Sigismund in Life's a Dream (La vida es sueno), the best known and most widely admired play of Catholic Europe's greatest dramatist, Pedro Calderon de la Barca. Calderon's long life (1600-1681) witnessed the pinnacle and collapse of Spanish political power as well as the great flowering of classical Spanish literature. He inherited his dramatic principles from his brilliant predecessor, Lope de Vega, perfecting his formula with more economical plots, greater subtlety of thought, and, in some cases, deeper character development and psychological insight. Nowhere is Calderon's talent more evident than in Life's a Dream, the poignant tale of a prince imprisoned at birth by his astrologer-king father and liberated on the same day a beautiful woman stumbles into his life. The interwoven themes of love, loss, power, and destiny make it the peer of such plays as Oedipus and Hamlet. The volume comes with a generous set of supplementary materials including critical introduction, translator's notes, suggestions for directors, bibliography, and glossary.

Spanish Language. The University of Kansas Humanistic Studies No. 28.Texto y Estudio por Jose M. De Osma. In Memoriam Julio de Osma.

Alan Paterson presents Calderon's original text, from manuscript and printed sources, with a skilful verse translation into English of a remarkable play, in which Calderon develops the motif of marital honour in quite original ways. The blending of deep pathos and humour anticipates the modern theatre of the absurd, though Calderon is pushing to the limits the license gained by Lope de Vega to mingle tragedy with comedy. ~ The play incorporates important aesthetic ideas of the Renaissance on painting and the character of the artist. ~ It must be unique in seventeenth-century European in dramatising the painter as he works in his studio and meditates on his art.~ Since the play deals with the aesthetic component in human behaviour, its own aeathetic status as a verse drama had been conserved in the translation. Those with no knowledge of Spanish will find a text which is agreeable to read and to perform. The translation is close enough, however, to offer the reader of limited ability in Spanish a reliable key to the Spanish text.~

Calderon initiated what has been called the second cycle of Spanish Golden Age theatre. Whereas his predecessor, Lope de Vega, pioneered the dramatic forms and genres of Spanish Golden Age theatre, Calderon polished and perfected them. Whereas Lope's strength lay in the sponteneity and naturalness of his work, Calderon's strength lay in his capacity for poetic beauty, dramatic structure and philosophical depth. Calderon was a perfectionist who often revisited and reworked his plays, even long after they debuted. This perfectionism was not just limited to his own work: many of his plays rework existing plays or scenes by other dramatists, improving their depth, complexity, and unity. (Many European playwrights of the time, such as Moliere, Corneille and Shakespeare, reworked old plays in this way.) Calderón excelled above all others in the genre of the "auto sacramental", in which he showed a seemingly inexhaustible capacity to giving new dramatic forms to a given set of theological constructs. Calderon wrote 120 "comedias", 80 "autos sacramentales" and 20 short comedic works called "entremeses".

Calderon initiated what has been called the second cycle of Spanish Golden Age theatre. Whereas his predecessor, Lope de Vega, pioneered the dramatic forms and genres of Spanish Golden Age theatre, Calderon polished and perfected them. Whereas Lope's strength lay in the sponteneity and naturalness of his work, Calderon's strength lay in his capacity for poetic beauty, dramatic structure and philosophical depth. Calderon was a perfectionist who often revisited and reworked his plays, even long after they debuted. This perfectionism was not just limited to his own work: many of his plays rework existing plays or scenes by other dramatists, improving their depth, complexity, and unity. (Many European playwrights of the time, such as Moliere, Corneille and Shakespeare, reworked old plays in this way.) Calderón excelled above all others in the genre of the "auto sacramental", in which he showed a seemingly inexhaustible capacity to giving new dramatic forms to a given set of theological constructs. Calderon wrote 120 "comedias", 80 "autos sacramentales" and 20 short comedic works called "entremeses".

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