CALDERON DE LA BARCA, Pedro. — Dramatist, b. in Madrid on 17 Jan. 1600, d. there on 25 May 1681. He endured the rigors of study first at the Jesuit college in Madrid, then at the universities of Alcalá and Salamanca; military discipline in Flanders, the Milanese, and Catalonia; and youthful restlessness, culminating in a raid on the Trinitarian monastery to surprise the murderer of his brother.
His literary success, achieved in the poetic competition for the canonization of Sts. Teresa, Ignatius of Loyola, Francis Xavier, and Isidore (1622) and with his first securely dated drama *Amor, honor y poder* (1623), earned recognition from Lope de Vega in his *El Laurel de Apolo* (1630) and from Philip IV, who, for the mythological comedy *El mayor encanto, Amor*, made him a knight of Santiago (1635) and, in 1636, superintendent of court spectacles. At the age of 51 he decided to embrace the ecclesiastical state; he became chaplain of the Reyes Nuevos in Toledo and later, in Madrid, honorary chaplain to the king and dean of the Congregation of St. Peter. His priestly and courtly duties did not interrupt his writing, which was in demand throughout Spain. After the accession of Charles II (1666), who was little inclined to patronage, he lived in poverty, devoted to prayer and art. His death was mourned across all Spanish-speaking lands. He wrote 73 autos sacramentales, 108 comedies, interludes, lyric poems, epics, and panegyrics.
Spiritual Profile. — The singer of Catholicism, in his absorbed life, cultivated a vigilant interior concentration in which intelligence, illumined by ardent faith, subdued his youthful passions and was reflected, balanced, in the structure of his literary works. Calderón’s biographical journey indeed shapes his writing, imprinting it with a tone of Christian sincerity that has led some to compare him with Dante.
He embraced the priesthood in maturity, uniting piety and poetry in a single mission: to confirm and defend the Catholic faith of his countrymen. In his view of life he overcame a fundamental Stoic pessimism through the comfort of Christian hope; he saw the world as a journey toward death and death as the beginning of true life, the awakening from dream to reality. Few writers have dramatized, as he did, the sense of life’s brevity and the torment of existence; solitary and almost dreamy, he lived thus even in palace circles. In Toledo he spent his days in sacred ministry, meditation on eternal truths, and contemplation of monuments of art; recalled to Madrid, he surrounded himself with devout and learned seclusion in his home, amid pious images and books of science and faith. In his will he directed that his body be clothed in the Franciscan habit, the belt of St. Augustine, and the scapular of Carmel, and buried in the manner of the poor.
This lofty detachment was not achieved without struggle against a passionate and rebellious nature. Moral transformations in his youth (he had an illegitimate son) and concessions to revenge for honor in dramas of jealousy found correction in the exemplary life of maturity and in dramas of Christian forgiveness. His piety rested on a solid rational foundation, drawn from Thomistic theology with Augustinian echoes, and centered on devotion to the Eucharist and the Immaculate Conception. To the triumph of these two spiritual fires he consecrated, with hidalgo ardor, his pen at a time when heresy flared around Spain and the Church needed defenders. Thus arose the autos sacramentales, to which Calderón entrusted the best of his soul and creative energies.
The “autos sacramentales.” — These were one-act plays of religious subject matter, performed by day, outdoors, for the feast of Corpus Christi. Valdivielso, Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina, and Mira de Amescua also composed them; Calderón fixed their type.
In them he set forth the essence of Catholic belief, with preference for themes most contested by Protestantism: transubstantiation, the problem of grace and free will, and the Immaculate Conception of Mary. Since the Eucharist is the center of Redemption, the autos proved not only an eucharistic apotheosis but also a powerful glimpse of human history, debased by original sin and rehabilitated by the sacrifice of Calvary. Calderón marshaled all his powers: intense faith, theological learning, theatrical experience, architectural skill of mind, mastery of literary technique, and a tendency to symbolism and idealistic transposition. All was channeled into a regal flood: mythology, medieval legend, sacred and profane history, dogmatic teaching, even the casuistry of the age, in a synthesis that, though often moving between abstraction and allegory, avoids frigidity and conventionalism and quickens all with a warm breath of humanity and piety, reaching unsuspected heights of faith and poetry.
Valbuena attempted a classification of the autos, distinguishing them as: philosophical-theological (e.g., *El gran teatro del mundo*; *El veneno y la triaca*); biblical (e.g., *La cena de Baltasar*); evangelical (e.g., *La siembra del Señor*); Marian (e.g., *La hidalga del valle*); historical-legendary (e.g., *El santo rey don Fernando*); occasional (e.g., *La segunda esposa y triunfar muriendo*); mythological (e.g., *El divino Orfeo*).
A grouping by cycles is also possible. One cycle consists of: *La vida es sueño*, *La nave del mercader*, *La viña del Señor*, *Lo que va del hombre a Dios*, *La divina Pilades*. The five dramas trace the spiritual dialectic of humanity, from the earthly paradise to the Tabernacle, from the Fall to sanctification through union in Christ. Another five autos form a Marian cycle, developing the entire theological system concerning the Virgin.
In all of them, though the Eucharist remains the inspiriting center, it is indirectly alluded to, and symbolic figures abound: Love, Humanity, the Earth, Paganism, the Synagogue, Faith, Grace, Free Will, etc. Yet the whole is steeped in an intense lyricism that fuses so completely with the action as to constitute one of the most original fruits of European theater, a suggestive world that expresses Spain and the drama of humanity. For their artistic and devotional merits some autos have been performed at Eucharistic Congresses, e.g., at Einsiedeln (1924) and Godesberg (1926).
The “devout comedies.” — Closely akin to the autos, though differing in technique and structure, are the devout comedies or saint plays. These too have openly apologetic aims, presenting themselves as a path toward religious truth attained through study and meditation, in a surprising dramatization.
*El mágico prodigioso* tells the story of the student Cipriano, who, to win the love of Justina, surrenders his soul to the devil; but when he attempts to embrace his beloved, he sees before him a skeleton, whereupon he converts to Christianity and faces martyrdom. Compared with Goethe’s *Faust*, it shows more differences than similarities. In *El purgatorio de san Patricio*, Ludovico Enio, struck by the sight of his own skeleton, thinks to save himself by visiting the saint’s well and, on his return, describes the torments of hell with hues that Menéndez y Pelayo likens to Dante’s. In *La devoción de la Cruz*, the bandit Eusebio is converted at the sight of the Cross and dies confessing his sins.
Other comedies derive their subject matter directly from the Bible, such as *Los cabellos de Absalón* and *Judas Macabeo*. Even in the comedies, mythology, for C., serves as a pretext for religious allegories; not without reason, the same subject is sometimes found in both comedies and autos. Thus *El mayor encanto, amor*, which deals with the loves of Ulysses and Circe, is related to the auto *Los encantos de la culpa*. Undeniable is the symbolism of *La estatua de Prometeo*, in which the figure of the rebellious protagonist is almost haloed by Christian redemption in the final forgiveness granted by the gods.
Other works by C. and characteristics of his theatre. But even in C.’s other works, it is almost always possible to isolate religious motifs or interests. His historical comedies (e.g., *El príncipe constante*; *El alcalde de Zalamea*), comedies of manners (e.g., *La dama duende*), and comedies of jealousy (e.g., *El médico de su honra*), along with the autos, embody the dramatic principles of the author, who, while taking up the threads of his predecessors—especially Lope—infuses them with reflection, structural balance, the fusion of the lyrical with the dramatic, and a greater characterization of the characters.
Nevertheless, his art operates within Baroque syntax, preserving its metaphorical and decorative tension, the search for contrast and the limitless. In his most famous drama, *La vida es sueño*, the Polish prince Sigismondo, confined due to his foretold predestination to evil, through successive psychological stages, moves from brutal savagery to a fruitful purification. Between these stages intervenes the screen of sleep, which reconciles dream with reality and instills the conviction of the illusion of human events and the concreteness of awakening in God. Menéndez y Pelayo saw in it a theological debate on original sin and redemption; Alfonso Reyes, the struggle between free will and fatalism. It is a Christian focusing of earthly values, to be surpassed in the vision of the hereafter. Rarely has art been able to animate abstractions and infuse them with such a lofty sense of human reflection as in this characteristic work.