When Calderón was born in 1600, Spain was the most powerful country in the world, but the seeds had already been planted of a decline that would take it, by the time of his death in 1681, to the humiliating status of a second-tier power. The story of Spain’s rise and fall is the sobering tale of a country that collapsed under the burden of its own achievements. Rather than chronicle that process in detail, which would occupy much more space than this Introduction allows, I will begin with three salient general features of early modern Spanish society: religious intensity,...

Rendering calderón’s La vida es sueño into English presents the translator with a series of difficult but unavoidable questions. Which dialect is desirable? Should archaisms be modernized or rendered into analogous English structures? Which is the most appropriate medium, verse or prose? What constitutes a scene change? How should proper names be handled? What about wordplay? And finally, what should be done with enigmatic or disputed passages? My dissatisfaction with the various answers that previous translators have given to these questions provides the primary impetus behind this new translation of the crown jewel of classical Spanish theater.

Most translators have...

Like many classical plays, Life’s a Dream can be productively staged with true minimalist principles. Only three settings are implied throughout the play: Sigismund’s tower and surroundings (1.1, 2.2, 3.1), the royal palace (1.2, 2.1, 3.2), and a wilderness area somewhere between the two (3.3). As Ruano de la Haza has pointed out, no mention is made in either the dialogue or the stage directions of stage decor in the palace scenes, which, consequently, were probably meant to be played on a bare stage in front of a neutral curtain.¹ The tower and wilderness scenes imply some background elements—mountains,...