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Essay Subject: Analysis of Pedro Calderon De La Barca's drama. Central characters. Philosophy & themes of this secular play. Comparison with "Don Quijote."... More...

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Paper Abstract: Analysis of Pedro Calderon De La Barca's drama. Central characters. Philosophy & themes of this secular play. Comparison with "Don Quijote." Paper Introduction: Introduction Pedro Calderon de la Barca y Henao shows what is ephemeral in existence and, at the same time, demonstrates the divine and eternal aspects of human life in his play La Vida Es Sueno. The title of the baroque Spanish play is usually translated into English as Life is a Dream, but (like all translations) this is somewhat misleading. A more accurate rendition of Barca's intent might be a line known to children in English-speaking countries throughout time and across the world: "Life Is But a Dream." The line from the children's round of "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" and Barca's play reflect the same essential philosophy about the world, in which spiritual goodness and nobility are the only real things that one can know: Everything else that happens in life is of no true consequence and may be relied upon only as much as we Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. (198 ). This is, obviously, not the same kind of monastic retreat thatBarca and Segismundo offer up as models of behavior in other cases. His imaginationoften runs away with him so that he sees windmills as giants and flocks ofsheep as enemy armies -- but he is undaunted by such terrible visions. DonQuixote's quest is an allegory of the eternal human quest for goodness andtruth in the face of insurmountable obstacles where Segismundo's relegationof the whole of life's trials, loves and wonders to something no moreyielding than a dream makes him seem in the end almost more pitiable thanheroic. There aretwo over-riding themes in this play (which are shared by much of Barca'swork), each of which is expressed in a single speech of Clotaldo's in theopening of the play. For thefirst two acts he seems too easily buffeted by those around him, at leastin terms of his temperment. The defense of honor is very much a matter of action in the worldand of responding to events in the world as if they were of the utmostimportance. An illuminative contrast can be made betweenSegismundo and his trials with the nature of reality and a far more famousSpanish literary hero, Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quixote. Edwards, Grynne. Cervantes's idealisticSpanish nobleman who, as a result of reading many tales of chivalry, comesto believe that he is a knight who must combat the world's injustices,seems much closer to the kind of heroic person who would be admired incontemporary society. He haslearned that "all our mortal bliss fades like a dream," an insight thatguides him "To ask indulgence of such novel hearts,/And pardon for allerrors in our parts" (Barca 1 1) (this last is a rather clever play on bothChristian humility and the tradition in Renaissance and baroque theater ofhaving the actors apologize for any errors in their performance). (1958). His reputation as a playwright grew rapidly and in 1636 his brotherJose edited a volume of his plays that contained Life Is a Dream (1635),considered to be a secular play mostly because of formal attributes ratherthan substantive ones, for the drama -- outstanding for its high moralconcepts and philosophic symbolism -- expresses its central concernsthrough religious terms (McBaha Introduction).After the writing of this play, Barca became even more deeply committed tothe Catholic Church. The character of Segismundo changes throughout the play, and one ofthe questions one is faced with in analyzing both this character andBarca's intent, is whether he is actually fundamentally different in theend or whether he simply reveals more of himself. If one has read only this single work of Barca's,one might imagine that this is the result of the playwright's attempt toportray the world of the play as simply all part of Segismundo's dreams.But, as De Armas (14) notes, this is a pervasive, indeed a nearlyubiquitous aspect of Barca's plays, and reflects Catholic ideas about theimportance of personal responsibility and the isolation of the soul onearth. New York: Bucknell UP. Historical and literary background Before proceeding with an analysis of the character, the play, andBarca's themes within it, a brief summary of the play may be helpful, aswill some biographical information on the writer, for his own life and thatof his characters are clearly intimately connected to each other. It is true that, likeSegismundo, his understanding of the distinction of reality and dream arevery much at odds with those around him. It is centralto the play and to Barca's messages about the proper conduct of a personthat it is Basilio's astrology -- which here seems little short ofnecromancy -- that initiates all the tragedy of the play. Even Basiliohimself comes to see this, as he tells the audience in his very long ActOne monologue: You know already that sciences are My chief concern and what I most esteem: Keen mathematics, through which I can take From Time and break from Rumor their control An function of revealing more each day: For when upon my tablets I behold As present the events of centuriesY How great an error it has been to give Too much belief to the events foretoldY Because the most determined destiny, The most insistent inclination, and The most pernicious planet can but bend The will, not force it (Barca 21, 23) Basilio is a simple man who realizes that he has made errors.Segismundo is a more complex character, for unlike both Basilio and theprotagonists of Barca's explicitly religious plays, he is a symbol of howdifficult it is to be virtuous and true to oneself. Certainly the Segismundoof Act Two who accosts his cousin Astolfo with: But since thou dost Prefer to boast of who thou art and make Complaint of this, the next time thou dost see Me I shall say "May God not be with thee! And yet, if one had to pick a companionthat one could count on absolutely, it is still someone like the man of LaMancha who would get the nod. In this, one must think that the character is in many waysstanding in for the playwright himself, serving as a proxy for Barca's ownbeliefs that honor and virtue are paramount but only to be found withcertainty within one's one soul. But honor (likeappearances) is not quite the same thing as truth or right, and there isthus an interesting contradiction within both Segismundo and the playitself: We are meant to see him as an honorable man, but is this a goodthing in the end? (1982). Quixote is a very different sort of character. McBaha, Michael. In many ways, the reader (or viewer) learns about Segismundo but theway in which his thoughts and actions contrast with those of other peoplein the play. De la Barca, Pedro Calderon. The old tutor states that "I still cannot decide/Ifthese events are just illusions or/Are really true" (Barca 12), summing upbefore Segismundo does himself the central question of the prince's and allhuman life. And, of course, thecharacter does alter, partly in response to the goodness that he becomeswitness to in the world, partly in response to Estrella's beauty andvirtue. Thisis Segismundo's play; everyone else (including the audience or reader) issimply an invited guest. (1991). Indeed, the play ends with Basilio and Rosaura commenting on howSegismundo's character is greatly changed, become discreet and prudent(Barca 1 1). He sets himself the taskof defending orphans, protecting maidens and widows, befriending thehelpless, and serving the causes of truth and beauty. (Onerarely hears about monks fighting duels, after all). But there is also inSegismundo a kind of primeval innocence that Barca meant to evoke, a sensethat the child is not only the father of the man but his intellectual andmoral heir as well. Of the next decade of his life, it isknown only that he was ordained in 1651. Barca, who was the last prominent figure of the golden age of Spanishliterature, was deeply affected by his religious beliefs, which clearlymark even his putatively secular plays, of which Life Is a Dream is one.Born in Madrid, on January 7, 16 , and educated at the Jesuit college inMadrid and at the University of Salamanca, at the age of 23 he became aplaywright and competed successfully in a poetry contest held in honor ofSt. However, rather than compromising the character of Segismundo, thisconflict is the most appealing thing about the character, for it makes himfar more believable. The two ideas are not unrelated,as this paper will explore, for in a world in which nothing is as itappears to be, the only thing that one can reasonably fall back upon isoneself and one's abiding sense of what is right. In 164 he joined a military campaign to suppress theCatalan revolt against the Crown. Segismundo's insight that life is nothing but a dream is a formof extreme renunciation that is both deeply Catholic (for it certainlyaccords with the historic monastic traditions of that religion) and yet atthe same time oddly un-Western. Until his death in 1681, he devoted himselfchiefly to writing autos sacramentales, allegorical plays that emphasizedthe moral aspects of life and dramatized in an original way the mystery ofthe Holy Eucharist.Calderon is considered one of the greatest of Spanish dramatists, equallydistinguished for his religious and his secular plays. (In fact, "Calderonian" has been coined as a wordto designate dramatic conflicts of honor arising from a wife's infidelityor the vaguest suspicion of it.) Segismundo: Trustworthy Pivot of the Play As Edwards (173) notes, one of the most important ways in whichBarca's secular plays are influenced by his religious ones is the way inwhich they are dominated by a single main character, a formal device thatis essentially the same in both Barca's secular and religious plays. Lifeis a Dream. Isidore, the patron saint of Madrid. NewYork: UP of America. Segismundo often seems childish, which mayhave been Barca's intention in attempting to show the effects of suchterrible treatment upon a sensitive person. Is not perhaps trust a higher virtue than honor? Introduction Pedro Calderon de la Barca y Henao shows what is ephemeral inexistence and, at the same time, demonstrates the divine and eternalaspects of human life in his play La Vida Es Sueno. He gave artisticform to the traditional autos sacramentales and became the acknowledgedmaster of this type of religious drama. (1993). Calderon took up residence as theresident priest of Toledo Cathedral in 1653 and was appointed honorarychaplain to the king in 1666. A more accuraterendition of Barca's intent might be a line known to children in English-speaking countries throughout time and across the world: "Life Is But aDream." The line from the children's round of "Row, Row, Row Your Boat"and Barca's play reflect the same essential philosophy about the world, inwhich spiritual goodness and nobility are the only real things that one canknow: Everything else that happens in life is of no true consequence andmay be relied upon only as much as we give credence to the figures thatvisit us in our dreams. Life is a Dream, written in about 1635, is both allegorical andphilosophical, telling us the story of Segismundo who as a character is inhis own way no more real than a dream. The fact that Segismundo is so clearly human (like Christ) iswhat is most appealing about him. But while the fickleness of both fate and appearances iscertainly the central motif of the play, nearly equally important (and ofgreater importance in many of Barca's other plays) is the significance ofhonor, which "Is of such fragile stuff that just one touch/Will crack it,or a breath will tarnish it" (Barca 13). Trans. Perhaps most importantly, the prince's realizations about theephemerality of lived experience lie in direct contrast to Basilio'sdabblings in astrology and are one of the more important ways that Barcasignals to the audience that Segismundo is a trustworthy character, unlikehis father and unlike almost everything else that one encounters in life.For Barca, the individual who surrenders himself, who recognizes theimpossibility of controlling anything but one's own response to the worldthat God has divinely organized, is the only trustworthy person (Greer 12-2 ). After many years,the king decides to test the character of his son and has Segismundodrugged and brought to the palace where, since he is unaccustomed to humansociety, he behaves in a crude and violent fashion.Consequently, he is returned to his confinement and becomes convinced thatthe episode in the palace was nothing but a dream. (Barca 4 ) seems to be avery different person from the one who closes the play with a beautifulspeech about the importance of honor and goodness. Basilio is someone who goes where only angels should, trying to seeinto the future that is properly the business only of God. Woodbury, NY: Barron's Educational Series. In introducing this work, this essaynoted that Barca used the character of Segismundo to explore two differentthemes: the way in which the realities of this world are of only passingconcern to the true Christian and the way in which each individual (or atleast each man) must be governed by strict standards of morality and honor. Segismundo, after being emotionally assaulted throughacts one and two, by the end of the third act has at least in some wayssymbolically returned to his tower, to the sheltered world of Edenicinnocence. In 1636 King Philip IV, who had commissioned Calderonto write a series of plays for the royal theater, made him a knight of theOrder of Santiago. Segismundo loses faith in people --whether it be his father or Clotaldo at different times -- but is redeemedby his faith in himself (and some others like Estrella) and in the goodnessthat all people carry within them through divine grace. Although Life Is aDream is formally different from these plays in the way that Segismundo isconstructed as a less-then-angelic hero -- that is, someone who mustnegotiate the complexities of human existence without any divine advantages-- the ways in which human behavior are framed and examined in Life Is aDream are clearly deeply influenced by this form of Catholic dramaturgy The chief themes of Barca's secular plays -- of which he wrote wellover 1 -- are devotion to the church and exaltation of the Castilian codeof honor requiring husband, father, or brother to punish the transgressionsof an unfaithful woman. The Play of Power: Mythological CourtDramas of Calderon de la Barca. This play seems at times as if it couldjust have easily as been written by a Buddhist monk as a Catholic one. Two Spanish Gentleman of Honor Such ideas about the nature of honor are less in vogue now than theywere in Barca's time (although his may have been a minority viewpoint evenwhen he was writing). Don Quijote: A New Translation:Backgrounds, Contexts, and Criticisms. It also makes him more admirable (although this maywell not have been Barca's intention), for it is easy for angels to bevirtuous. The Polish prince has been confinedin tower under the care of his tutor, Clotaldo, because astrologers hadpredicted that he would harm his father, King Basilio. William Colford. This paper examines the central character of Life is a Dream, thecaptured and tormented prince Segismundo, as a way of analyzing both theparticular way this character and this play connect with and affect theaudience and more generally as a way of examining Barca's generalintentions in what have come to be known as his secular plays. Later the people revoltand liberate the prince, but Segismundo is afraid that this new experiencemay be no more real (to him) than the last. The Prince in the Tower: Perspectivesof La Vida es Sueno. It is, of course, always perilous to judge a work that has celebratedits three-hundredth birthday by modern standards (although it is, ofcourse, equally perilous to try to understand how contemporary audienceswould have understood Barca's work). De Cervantes, Miguel et al. AlthoughCervantes's play is nearly a century older than Barca's it seems much morein line with modern sensibilities in many ways. Princeton: Princeton UP. Greer, Margaret. Although Barca certainly means for Segismundo to be an attractive heroto the reader or audience, it is hard for the contemporary reader to findthe character either wholly sympathetic or wholly believable. New York: Norton. After he is proclaimed king,he realizes that this experience of freedom is not going to end and isreal, and yet at the same time he also comes to understand that life in itsentirety is nothing but a dream, which is given meaning only by thenobility of each person's actions within their lived reveries and thepromise of heaven afterwards. In these plays Calderon vividlydramatized abstract concepts of Roman Catholic theology throughpersonification, thus making them real to his audience. (1999). Approaches to the Theater of Calderon. The title of thebaroque Spanish play is usually translated into English as Life is a Dream,but (like all translations) this is somewhat misleading. London: Marion Boyars. But while Segismundo proves toofrail in some essential way to be able to surmount the moral andphilosophical complexities of a world in which there are no certainties,Quixote simply decides to make his own reality. In many ways, the rather schizophrenic nature of the character ofSegismundo results directly from the contrast in these two themes ofBarca's. Lorca: The Theatre Beneath the Sand:Critical Appraisals. Barcapresents Segismundo to us as a character who comes to see that all thetruth he needs has been there all along, within himself, merely waiting tobe discovered. But Segismundo's response seems more like a protestation thatat heart he remains very much as he always has, and that it is others'perceptions of him that have changed more than anything else. Much of the playaddresses the issue of how and what one can trust in this world, and eachof the characters finds disillusionment in different ways and places.Basilio loses faith in the stars. Works Cited De Armas, Frederick. If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.

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