Calderon de la barca life is a dream pdf

Pedro Calderon de la Barca was born in Madrid, January 17, , of good family. He was educated at the Jesuit College in Madrid and at the University of Salamanca; and a doubtful tradition says that he began to write plays at the age of thirteen. His literary activity was interrupted for ten years, , by military service in Italy and the Low Countries, and again for a year or more in Catalonia.

In he became a Knight of the Order of Santiago, and in he entered the priesthood, rising to the dignity of Superior of the Brotherhood of San Pedro in Madrid. He held various offices in the court of Philip IV, who rewarded his services with pensions, and had his plays produced with great splendor. He died May 5, At the time when Calderon began to compose for the stage, the Spanish drama was at its height.

Lope de Vega, the most prolific and, with Calderon, the greatest, of Spanish dramatists, was still alive; and by his applause gave encouragement to the beginner whose fame was to rival his own.

The national type of drama which Lope had established was maintained in its essential characteristics by Calderon, and he produced abundant specimens of all its varieties. Of regular plays he has left a hundred and twenty; of "Autos Sacramentales," the peculiar Spanish allegorical development of the medieval mystery, we have seventy-three; besides a considerable number of farces. The dominant motives in Calderon's dramas are characteristically national: fervid loyalty to Church and King, and a sense of honor heightened almost to the point of the fantastic.

Though his plays are laid in a great variety of scenes and ages, the sentiment and the characters remain essentially Spanish; and this intensely local quality has probably lessened the vogue of Calderon in other countries.

You don't need a PayPal or Stripe account and it only takes a minute. The buttons below are set in British Pounds currency - click here if you would prefer to donate in USD. ROSAURA : Wild hippogriff swift speeding, Thou that dost run, the winged winds exceeding, Bolt which no flash illumes, Fish without scales, bird without shifting plumes, And brute awhile bereft Of natural instinct, why to this wild cleft, This labyrinth of naked rocks, dost sweep Unreined, uncurbed, to plunge thee down the steep?

Stay in this mountain wold, And let the beasts their Phaeton behold. For I, without a guide, Save what the laws of destiny decide, Benighted, desperate, blind. Take any path whatever that doth wind Down this rough mountain to its base, Whose wrinkled brow in heaven frowns in the sun's bright face.

Ah, Poland! My fate may well say so:— But where shall one poor wretch find pity in her woe? For if we are the two Who left our native country with the view Of seeking strange adventures, if we be The two who, madly and in misery, Have got so far as this, and if we still Are the same two who tumbled down this hill, Does it not plainly to a wrong amount, To put me in the pain and not in the account? ROSAURA: I do not wish to impart, Clarin, to thee, the sorrows of my heart; Mourning for thee would spoil the consolation Of making for thyself thy lamentation; For there is such a pleasure in complaining, That a philosopher I've heard maintaining One ought to seek a sorrow and be vain of it, In order to be privileged to complain of it.

But what, my lady, say, Are we to do, on foot, alone, our way Lost in the shades of night? For see, the sun descends another sphere to light. But if my sight deceives me not, between These rugged rocks, half-lit by the moon's ray And the declining day, It seems, or is it fancy? Of such a rude device Is the whole structure of this edifice, That lying at the feet Of these gigantic crags that rise to greet The sun's first beams of gold, It seems a rock that down the mountain rolled.

Romeo and Juliet William Shakespeare.