Life Is A Dream [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION I. THE PERIOD If a student of Comparative Literature or of the Humanities were asked how he would choose the most representative play in a nation's dramatic literature he would say, in all probability, "I would read the masterwork of the master craftsman of the Golden Age in their theater." In Spain this could mean only one thing: La vida es sueno, by Calderón. No single play in the Spanish language has enjoyed such an international reputation for more than three centuries; no single play is so universally esteemed and quoted throughout the Hispanic world, on both sides of the Atlantic, as this masterpiece by the last of the great dramatists of Spain's Golden Age. To classify Calderón's La vida es sueno as his finest achievement is high praise indeed, for he composed over two hundred works for the stage, many of them among the best in the national theater; bui to assign this play first place in a country where there was an astonishing number of master playwrights during Calderón's lifetime is to appreciate the position held in Spanish letters by this profound philosophical drama. Only Hamlet and Faust can be compared with it in their respective literatures. And when we consider that Calderón composed his masterwork in his early thirties, while Shakespeare's great drama was produced at the peak of his artistic maturity and Goethe's classic was the result of lifelong endeavors, we begin to realize still more the merits of the Spanish author, who gave up writing secular plays and entered the priesthood at an age when men of letters are approaching the prime of their creative powers. His abilities were