In the Library
Life Is a Dream
Pedro Calderón de la Barca, 1635
- Form
- Form Play
- Reading time
- Reading time 1 hours
- Translated by
- Translated by Edward FitzGerald
- Chapters
- Chapters 5
- Length
- Length 17k words
£1.99
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About the book
A prince raised in a tower since birth wakes one morning in a palace, told he is heir to the kingdom of Poland, and the world he has known turns out to have been a rehearsal. Pedro Calderón de la Barca staged this play in Madrid in 1635, at the height of the Spanish Golden Age, working in the polished hendecasyllables and tight argument that defined Spanish baroque drama. Segismundo, drugged and returned to the tower, cannot tell which life was real. King Basilio had locked him away to outwit a prophecy. The prince, freed again, must choose how a man behaves when nothing is certain. The play is the Spanish theatre's deepest meditation on the unreliability of the world.