Spain’s Shakespeare asked whether life is only a dream
Pedro Calderón de la Barca (17 January 1600–25 May 1681) polished Golden Age theatre after Lope de Vega and left La vida es sueño—Life Is a Dream—as a fretting over fate versus free will. Soldier, knight of Santiago, then priest, he wrote into his eighties for palace and Corpus Christi alike.
Baptised in Madrid’s San Martín parish, he was third of six children of treasury secretary Diego Calderón and Ana González de Henao. His mother died in 1610; Jesuit Colegio Imperial schooling aimed him at orders, but he read law at Salamanca. Poetry prizes for St Isidore (1620–1622) preceded his stage debut: Amor, honor y poder, on Edward III, played at the Royal Alcázar on 29 June 1623 during Charles, Prince of Wales’s marriage embassy. Two more plays that year launched a run of over seventy mostly secular dramas in two decades. Army service in Italy and Flanders (1625–1635) and gallantry at Tarragona in 1640 preceded a military pension; Philip IV made him a knight of Santiago in 1636–1637 for Buen Retiro spectacles.
Personal blows—brother Diego’s death (1647), an infant son Pedro José by an unnamed woman who soon died—steered him toward a Franciscan tertiary life and ordination in 1651. He vowed to quit commercial comedy, then mostly wrote mythological palace plays and autos sacramentales. Two autos drew Inquisition scrutiny in 1662; one stayed banned until 1671. Still, he became honorary chaplain to Philip IV in 1663 and served the next king. In his eighty-first year he wrote Hado y Divisa de Leonido y Marfisa for Charles II’s marriage; he died 25 May 1681 leaving unfinished Corpus plays and asking for a bare burial.
Critics tally about 120 comedias, 80 autos, and 20 entremeses. He trimmed scenes and metres for unity, joked metafictionally about theatrical clichés, and in Life Is a Dream used a misleading prophecy to defend Catholic free will against deterministic fate. Goethe praised the architecture; Romantics from Shelley to Borges kept listening.
Source: Pedro Calderón de la Barca
