The masterwork of Spain’s preeminent dramatist—now in a new verse translation Life Is a Dream is a work many hold to be the supreme example of Spanish Golden Age drama. Imbued with highly poetic language and humanist ideals, it is an allegory that considers contending themes of free will and predestination, illusion and reality, played out against the backdrop of court intrigue and the restoration of personal honor. In the mountainous barrens of Poland, the rightful heir to the kingdom has been imprisoned since birth in an attempt by his father to thwart fate. Meanwhile, a noblewoman arrives to seek revenge against the man who deceived and forsook her love for the prospect of becoming king of Poland. Richly symbolic and metaphorical, Life Is a Dream explores the deepest mysteries of human experience. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
This volume is a sequel to Four Comedies of Calderón (1980), which was hailed by reviewers as superb, faithful, and actable. The three comedies in the present volume are generally counted among Calderón's masterpieces: Casa con dos puertas mala es de guardar (A House with Two Doors Is Difficult to Guard); No hay burlas con el amor (No Trifling with Love); Mañanas de abril y mayo (Mornings of April and May). For the first time theaters will have the opportunity of staging these three masterpieces of the Golden Age drama of Spain in accurate and charming English versions. The verse used is flexible and musical, preserving the atmosphere and much of the poetic quality of the originals. An introduction deals with the characteristics of the plays and with the problems they pose for the translator. Concise explanatory notes clarify Golden Age dramatic practices.
Calderón, the great dramatist of Spain's Golden Age, was a skilled writer of comedy. His serious dramas have long been highly regarded in the English-speaking world, but his many sparkling comedies are an untapped reservoir for the contemporary theater. The four plays in this volume, three of which appear in English for the first time, have been translated by Kenneth Muir, the noted British scholar and director. These are comedies of intrigue. They turn on mysterious, quarrels, and jealousies, and they abound in complication and misunderstandings, yet in the end all is explained, to the delight of the audience. Muir's long experience with acting and directing and his keen ear for the nuances of the English language, together with his perceptive critical scholarship, have enabled him to produce a text that actors can speak naturally, and that modern audiences can enjoy as did the audiences of seventeenth-century Spain. The graceful, poetical dialogue and the masterly stagecraft of Calderón are undiminished in these deft translations. The plays featured are From Bad to Worse, The Secret Spoken Aloud, The Worst is Not Always Certain, and The Advantages and Disadvantages of a Name. Ann L. Mackenzie has provided an introduction to each play and notes on the text that will be useful to the actors and directors who seek to present these comedies as they were intended—on the stage.
As the title indicates, Pedro Calderon de la Barca's Jealousy tragically dramatizes the same key themes and emotions that preoccupied Shakespeare in Othello. His portrayal of the mind and passion of King Herod, a ruler traditionally vilified in Catholic Spain during Calderon's age, reveals a compassionate understanding and lack of prejudice. Through the madness of possessive love and jealousy, Herod first destroys his wife's love and trust, and then her life.
Escrita para el cumpleanos de la reina Mariana de Austria. La materia mitologica constituye la base argumental de esta obra que articula tres historias de amor cruzadas. El sentido moral viene dado por el triunfo del amor correspondido, de la virtud sobre los vicios y de la razon sobre la pasion.
There are two surviving versions of Calderon's play on the Faust theme, El magico prodigioso. The first, preserved in an incomplete autograph manuscript, was written for performance in the town of Yepes on the Feast of Corpus Christi in 1637, with staging appropriate for the traditional Corpus mystery play, the auto sacramental. The second, first published in 1663, is an adaptation for performance in the playhouses of Madrid. The circumstances of the play's textual identity are uniquein the seventeenth-century Spanish theatre and the purpose of this composite edition, which uses different founts for the two versions, is to reveal in action not only the dramatist's developing vision but the imperatives of a remarkable commercial theatre and its symbiotic relationship with the religious order of the day. At the same time the opportunity has been taken to provide a study of the play and its two versions, its sources and its context; a lengthy introduction, extensive notes and a full textual apparatus accompany the composite text.
Don Pedro has it all – high position, wealth, a beautiful family – and enjoys the good life in the heart of the Spanish capital. But now he faces a challenge that would test the patience of a saint. It is time to marry off his daughters. It’s bad enough that his eldest Beatriz is both obsessed by the latest fashions and talks like a university professor, but his youngest Leonor is already enjoying illicit midnight trysts with her lover and is in no mood to accept an arranged marriage. Throw into this explosive mix the extravagant young man about town, Don Alonso, who thinks all women, like all plays, are excellent on the first night and boring on the second, and you have the recipe for an hilarious comedy that reaches out effortlessly across the centuries.
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