Life is a Dream By Pedro Calderon
Theater
This play is from the golden age of Spanish plays, from the playwright Cervantes called the Master of Innovation. Life is a Dream was published in 1635 making it a near contemporary of Shakespeare's Elizabethan Theater.
The play centers around a Polish Prince who is held prisoner by his father because of negative astrological predictions of the tyrannical reign of this son in the future. The father brings his son to court drugged and as he awakes to his role as crown prince, he behaves unruly and murderously. Prince Segismund is drugged again and boxed off to his old prison, where he is told all was a dream. He is then freed by rebellious soldiers and leads a coup d’ etat against his father Basil. In the end he bends the knee to Basil and is set up as King Regent and resolves all the conflict with Marriages. Prince Segismund imprisons the very rebels that free him in his old prison to show total allegiance to his fathers reign and his own transition to King Regent.
The play full of Shakespearian devices Women in men's dress, dress changes define status of women, fathers who learn of long lost daughters, princes who wrong woman and resolve in marriage, a clown with truth in his jokes, and the poor dying accidently in the games of the powerful.
The play has very long speeches. Often using deceptive wording. While the themes are clear often I had to go back and read the text again and again. It was a bit of a slog, I am sure that it is a play better in performance were action can enhance the play. I think there are at least two versions on Youtube so it may be a better watch than a read.
It has a meta score of 65 /100 on my re-readability scale, and is between Bolano A Little Lumpen and Ezekiel both of which I feel like are worth a reread but I have marked it as a not reread book in my notes. I cannot go much deeper in the canon of this Calderon because it is hard to get hands on another play in any edition. I would greatly appreciate any comments by someone who has read this in Spanish.