Calderón, the great dramatist of Spain's Golden Age, was a skilled writer of comedy. His serious dramas have long been highly regarded in the English-speaking world, but his many sparkling comedies are an untapped reservoir for the contemporary theater. The four plays in this volume, three of which appear in English for the first time, have been translated by Kenneth Muir, the noted British scholar and director. These are comedies of intrigue. They turn on mysterious, quarrels, and jealousies, and they abound in complication and misunderstandings, yet in the end all is explained, to the delight of the audience. Muir's long experience with acting and directing and his keen ear for the nuances of the English language, together with his perceptive critical scholarship, have enabled him to produce a text that actors can speak naturally, and that modern audiences can enjoy as did the audiences of seventeenth-century Spain. The graceful, poetical dialogue and the masterly stagecraft of Calderón are undiminished in these deft translations. The plays featured are From Bad to Worse, The Secret Spoken Aloud, The Worst is Not Always Certain, and The Advantages and Disadvantages of a Name. Ann L. Mackenzie has provided an introduction to each play and notes on the text that will be useful to the actors and directors who seek to present these comedies as they were intended—on the stage.
The first comprehensive study of Calderón in EnglishPedro Calderón de la Barca (1600-1681) is one of the most important dramatists - many would say the single most important dramatist - of the Spanish Golden Age. Spain''s dominant and most prestigious playwright for much of the seventeenth century, his work is still regularly staged and translated, influential in more recent times on writers as diverse as Schiller, Shelley and Lorca. The author of around 120 plays (not counting his numerous Corpus Christi autos) in a variety of styles, Calderón is most famous for his stirring dramas, characterized by rhetorically powerful poetry, dramatic structures carefully calibrated to produce poignant echoes, and the fizzing intellectual energy they apply to the age''s ontological, eschatological and political preoccupations. His plays succeed in combining these perennial concerns with compelling plots subtle enough to defy definitive interpretation. As this volume seeks to show, however, Calderón''s comedies deserve equal recognition. Too long stereotyped as a dour, cerebral conservative, this playwright''s comic works are as amusing as they are clever. This Companion is the first comprehensive study of Calderón in English. It provides a rigorous but readable introduction to the man, his work and its legacy. Its chapters - written by leading international comedia specialists - provide an overview of his life, explain his intellectual, social, moral, and literary contexts, and examine his stagecraft, his corpus, and his reception both within and without the Hispanic world up to the twenty-first century. Specific chapters are devoted to La vida es sueño, his most famous work, which appears on many a university syllabus, and to his infamous wife-murder plays.ual recognition. Too long stereotyped as a dour, cerebral conservative, this playwright''s comic works are as amusing as they are clever. This Companion is the first comprehensive study of Calderón in English. It provides a rigorous but readable introduction to the man, his work and its legacy. Its chapters - written by leading international comedia specialists - provide an overview of his life, explain his intellectual, social, moral, and literary contexts, and examine his stagecraft, his corpus, and his reception both within and without the Hispanic world up to the twenty-first century. Specific chapters are devoted to La vida es sueño, his most famous work, which appears on many a university syllabus, and to his infamous wife-murder plays.ual recognition. Too long stereotyped as a dour, cerebral conservative, this playwright''s comic works are as amusing as they are clever. This Companion is the first comprehensive study of Calderón in English. It provides a rigorous but readable introduction to the man, his work and its legacy. Its chapters - written by leading international comedia specialists - provide an overview of his life, explain his intellectual, social, moral, and literary contexts, and examine his stagecraft, his corpus, and his reception both within and without the Hispanic world up to the twenty-first century. Specific chapters are devoted to La vida es sueño, his most famous work, which appears on many a university syllabus, and to his infamous wife-murder plays.ual recognition. Too long stereotyped as a dour, cerebral conservative, this playwright''s comic works are as amusing as they are clever. This Companion is the first comprehensive study of Calderón in English. It provides a rigorous but readable introduction to the man, his work and its legacy. Its chapters - written by leading international comedia specialists - provide an overview of his life, explain his intellectual, social, moral, and literary contexts, and examine his stagecraft, his corpus, and his reception both within and without the Hispanic world up to the twenty-first century. Specific chapters are devoted to La vida es sueño, his most famous work, which appears on many a university syllabus, and to his infamous wife-murder plays.an, his work and its legacy. Its chapters - written by leading international comedia specialists - provide an overview of his life, explain his intellectual, social, moral, and literary contexts, and examine his stagecraft, his corpus, and his reception both within and without the Hispanic world up to the twenty-first century. Specific chapters are devoted to La vida es sueño, his most famous work, which appears on many a university syllabus, and to his infamous wife-murder plays.
This volume considers the influential revival of ancient philosophical skepticism in the 16th and early 17th centuries and investigates, from a comparative perspective, its reception in early modern English, Spanish and French drama, dedicating detailed readings to plays by Shakespeare, Calderón, Lope de Vega, Rotrou, Desfontaines, and Cervantes. While all the plays employ similar dramatic devices for "putting skepticism on stage", the study explores how these dramas, however, give different "answers" to the challenges posed by skepticism in relation to their respective historico-cultural and "ideological" contexts.
Both reason and exalted passions become the preserve of noble blood in Calderón's plays. The concern of his characters that they not commit a "low" action, is not simply a Christian concern with avoiding sin. The characters are much more concerned with practicing a virtue which will distinguish them from the vulgar.
