Calderón de la Barca, Pedro (1600–81), Spanish dramatist, successor to Lope de
Vega. He wrote about 200 plays, the best of them dating from between 1625 and 1640. After being ordained priest in 1651 he wrote mainly
autos sacramentales, which presented the abstract ideas of Catholic theology with intense lyricism and excellent stagecraft, and spectacle-plays for the Court theatre at Buen Retiro, with which he had been associated since its inception under Philip IV. The best known of his early religious plays are
La cena del rey Baltasar (
Belshazzar's Feast,
c.1634), translated into English in 1969, and
El gran teatro del mundo (
The Great World Theatre,
c.1641), on which Hugo von
Hofmannsthal based his
Grosse Welttheater, first seen at the Salzburg festival in 1922 in a production by
Reinhardt. Of the secular plays the finest and best known is
La vida es sueño (
c.1638), a story of human regeneration which, as
Life's a Dream, was produced in London in 1922.
El alcalde de Zalamea (
The Mayor of Zalamea,
c.1640) is a study of prudent virtue and of the vices which spring from uncontrolled passions. As in all Calderón's plays, the ideas are transmitted not only through the surface movement but also through the images which parallel or subtly contradict it. The play was produced at the
National Theatre in 1981.
Calderón's plays are highly organized; he is always firmly in control of his medium in that the subplot becomes an aspect of the main plot and no character is superfluous, no action irrelevant, no detail extraneous. Among his other outstanding works are the
Faust-like
El mágico prodigioso (
The Wonder-Working Magician, 1637), based on the life of St Cyprian, part of which was translated by
Shelley; and the series based on the ‘point of honour’ so important in Spanish life:
El médico de su honra (1635), translated as
The Surgeon of His Honour in 1960,
El pintor de su deshonra (
The Painter of His Dishonour, 1637), and
A secreto agravio, secreta venganza (1635), translated in 1961 as
Secret Vengeance for Secret Insult.
Calderón had a considerable influence on European drama, many of his plays becoming known to English Restoration dramatists through French translations, and resulting in Tuke's
Adventures of Five Hours (1663), based on
Los empeños de seis horas (at the suggestion of Charles II), and Digby's
Elvira; or,
The Worst not Always True (
c.1663), based on
No siempre la peor es cierto. It is also probable that
Killigrew found some of
The Parson's Wedding (1664) in
La dama duende, a cloak-and-sword play writen for production at Court in
c.1629, and that
Wycherley took some of
The Gentleman Dancing-Master (1672) from
El maestro de danzar.
