Life is a Dream (Pedro Calderón De La Barca, Trans. Nilo Cruz)

Yesterday I admitted to having no stronger a ground in the English classics than the average theater student, so it must not be a surprise that my non-English theatrical knowledge is similarly emaciated. American programs often focus on the few truly classic American authors (such as Tennessee Williams or Eugene O’Neill,) and the acknowledged masters such as Shakespeare, and a person is lucky if he escapes traditional education with even a passing understanding of Moliere.

So I’ve never heard of Pedro Calderón De La Barca, though I’m given to understand that he is rather famous and that this is his most famous work.

I am also a rather mathematical person, especially for theater folk, and I often have difficulty easily drawing meaning from poetic language; it just isn’t my strength, so reading this play, which is translated and poetical, and given to the stylish excesses of classic theatre was always going to be an uphill battle for me to truly respond to it.

What I found was a noble portrait of free will v destiny, reason v passion, and honor v practicality, soaring with deep rhetoric and operatic plots.

Rosaura, a potentially noble woman disguised as a man travels with her servant Clarion for unknown purposes, she comes across a jail in the middle of nowhere and we learn during the first act that the king of Poland (Basilio) saw prophecies that his son (Segismundo) would be a terrible ruler and so has imprisoned him since his birth under the watchful eye of Clatado, who happens to be Rosaura’s father who left her mother.

Also central to plot are the niece and nephew of Basilio, Estrella and Astolfo, who are set to marry each other and inherit the kingdom. Astolfo happens (as we learn later though it’s fairly well telegraphed,) to have been betrothed to Rosaura but left her. Basilio decides to challenge fate and seat Segismundo on the throne to see if he behaves tyrannically.

Segismundo, bereft of any kindness in his life, does act with anger and malice once he’s revealed to be crown prince, and he’s quickly imprisoned again and made to believe that his brief respite from torture was just a dream.

Since royal lines are predicated on heretical rule soon the army demands that Segismundo be freed and a civil war erupts. As he wins Segismundo, who’s trapped in not believing anything is dream or reality anymore, reasons that one must act good, even if one is in a dream, and he spares his father’s life in attempt to rule justly, thus averting (perhaps) the prophecies that everyone feared.

There’s a lot going on, and I was far more interested in Rosuara’s subplot of honor and dignity, but it was interesting to read a pre-enlightenment play which values reason above destiny. If this were a Greek play no doubt Segismundo would have no choice but to become the tyrant foretold and that would be his tragedy, but here the tragedy is that Basilio so believe in portents that he deprived a human of warmth and himself of a relationship with his son, and it is only what few lessons which had been taught to Segismundo which allowed an aversion at all.

The literary value of the play, I think, far outstrips its current theatrical value, but I’m not going to spend more time analyzing it at present.

This is not a play I intend to return to; it’s not what I love in theater, but I’m glad I had the opportunity to read such a good translation and I hope to be able to visit other foreign-language works as time goes on.