Theatre
Life Is a Dream
La vida es sueño
Pedro Calderón de la Barca · 1635
Synopsis
An imaginary Poland. King Basilio, an astrologer, has read in the stars that his son Segismundo will be a tyrant and has had him shut away since birth in a tower, where only Clotaldo, his guardian, instructs him. Rosaura, disguised as a man and come to take revenge on Duke Astolfo, who abandoned her, discovers the chained prisoner. The king then decides to put his son to the test: asleep, Segismundo wakes in the palace, king for a day; if he rules badly, he will be returned to his tower and made to believe he dreamed.
Context
Premiered in 1635, the play was published the following year in the first volume of the author's comedies, which it opens. It takes up an old story, that of the Thousand and One Nights in which a drugged beggar wakes up as a king, and a comedy by Lope about a prince raised far from the throne because of a prophecy. At its centre are human freedom in the face of the destiny announced by the stars, and the boundary between dream and waking. The author later drew from it a one-act religious drama bearing the same title.
Who it is for
A play in verse, in three days, in which two plots intersect: that of the imprisoned prince and that of Rosaura, who has come to avenge her honour.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as the summit of Golden Age theatre; ranked among the forty greatest plays of all time by The Independent.