CALDERÓN DE LA BARCA, PEDRO (1600-1681) , Spanish dramatist, was born at Madrid, Jan. 17, 1600. The son of an hidalgo from the Montaña district of Asturias, Calderón was sent to a Jesuit school and later studied canon law at the universities of Alcalá and Salamanca. He left the latter university in 1620 and soon made his literary debut. His life, unlike that of his great predecessor, Lope de Vega, was largely uneventful except for a few years of foreign travel and military service. Perhaps the only incident now remembered that gives an indication of the passionate depths that underlay his poetic impulse is his daring armed entry into a convent in pursuit of a certain Pedro de Villegas, who had wounded his brother.
Calderón's production of comedias for public performance ceased when he was ordained as a priest in 1651. He continued to write autos (religious plays), however, and special pieces for the court.
He returned to Madrid in 1666, where he lived quietly until his death, May 25, 1681.
Calderón wrote little that was not dramatic and created a group of literary disciples in his distinct manner of Spanish comedia. His innovations were in style and technique. He retained the comedia's traditional three acts, the characteristic and almost operatic variation of verse types, and the representation of character in terms of such national values and channels of conduct as honor,
but the sense of his poetry and of his dramatic structure was his own. Calderón's dramas are Baroque. He adopted the soaring "cultist" metaphor employed by Luis de Góngora, but bound its expansive force within the iron cage of the Neo-Scholastic logic;
consequently there resulted a conflict of freedom and imprisonment, of verbal passion and repression, that is typically Baroque.
One of Calderón's frequent poetic devices is to pile one splendid metaphor upon another, and then to join them in a final listing in order to accentuate the logical tension of their disparity.
His style twists and writhes in an effort to free itself from the bonds of necessity, and it is interesting to note that imprisonment and freedom themselves are among Calderón's favorite dramatic themes.
Not only are there physical prisons; even man's stay on earth is seen as closed in by walls of death, an imprisonment for which the only alleviation lies in dogmatic conformance.
Thus Calderón is not only a stylist but a dramatist of rebellion, and, beyond rebellion, of forced submission to Catholicism and social values.
In El Médico de su honor ("The Doctor of His Own Honor") the protagonist is forced to kill his wife despite her innocence because she was suspected publicly and because the code of honor demands such retribution.
The structure of Calderón's plays is equally rigid, and beneath the rush of event and surprise can be traced a detailed logical planning.
Altogether Calderón composed some 111 comedias and about 70 autos, most of them extant.
Of his comedias the best known are El Alcalde de Zalamea ("The Mayor of Zalamea"), El Mágico prodigioso
("The Wonderful Magician"), which in many ways parallels the Faust legend, and the famous La Vida es sueño ("Life Is a Dream").
This last play has often been termed the Catholic reply to tragedy. Its hero, Segismundo, a prince of Poland, has been imprisoned by his father in a deserted tower because of an astrological prediction,
and he is impotently rebellious against his chains. The King decides to test Segismundo's behavior and has him drugged and transported secretly to the palace.
He awakes in the role of prince, and his arrogance and misconduct are such as might be expected.
When subsequently he is returned in the same manner to his prison, Segismundo becomes convinced that life is indeed a dream and that mundane desires and problems are therefore of little account;
he has been trained in the way of submission. It is a striking dramatic device, and the poetry and presentation of the play are breathtaking in their power.
Calderón's position as one of the great Catholic dramatists is further confirmed by his autos sacramentales. These are perhaps best defined as representations of dogma,
and are often allegorical in substance. Their abstract nature gave free rein to Calderón's mastery of Scholastic logic, and they were presented usually in connection with the celebration of the Eucharist.
Perhaps the most read at present is El gran teatro del mundo ("The Great Theatre of the World").
Calderón's position as the last great Golden Age dramatist of Spain, and the Baroque intensity of his thematic approach and style, have contributed to his importance in the history of European literature.
When Schlegel and other German critics were trying to break French Neoclassic molds for the drama, they looked equally to Calderón and to Shakespeare for inspiration from the past.
Calderón had more or less defined the Spanish drama for Europe, and his influence on Romanticism was extremely important.
Shelley was very fond of his dramas, and Calderón's influence is still recognizable in so late a writer as Hugo von Hofmannsthal.
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