, Madrid (
J. Figueras, 1878).
Theatrical innovator Calderón initiated what has been called the second cycle of
Spanish Golden Age theatre. Whereas his predecessor,
Lope de Vega, pioneered the dramatic forms and genres of Spanish Golden Age theatre, Calderón polished and perfected them. Whereas Lope's strength lay in the spontaneity and naturalness of his work, Calderón's strength lay in his capacity for poetic beauty, dramatic structure and philosophical and theological depth. Calderón was a perfectionist who often revisited and reworked his plays, even long after they were first performed. His perfectionism was not just limited to his own work: several of his plays adapt and reimagine existing plays or scenes by other dramatists, improving their depth, complexity, and unity. Calderón excelled above all others in the genre of the "auto sacramental", in which he showed a seemingly inexhaustible capacity to giving new dramatic forms to a given set of theological and philosophical constructs. Calderón wrote 120 "comedias", 80 "autos sacramentales" and 20 short comedic works called
entremeses. As
Goethe notes, Calderón tended to take special care with the dramatic structures of his plays. He usually included fewer scenes than other contemporary playwrights (such as Lope de Vega) so as to avoid any superfluous distractions from the essential focus of the plays. He also worked towards a greater stylistic uniformity by reducing the number of different
metres in his plays. Calderón realized that any play was a work of fiction, and that the structure of the baroque play was entirely artificial. He therefore, probably influenced by
Cervantes, made regular use of
metafictional techniques, such as making his characters joke about the
clichés they are expected to slavishly follow. Most famously in his masterpiece,
La Vida es Sueño, Calderón uses an
astrological prophecy made decades before the beginning of the play as a way to deliberately mislead the audience about how the plot will unfold. Calderón intended to subtly defend the Catholic doctrine of
free will against the
Calvinist doctrine of
predestination and to depict the unwritten nature of each individual's future based on their choices. Although his poetry and plays leaned towards
culteranismo, Calderón usually reduced the level and obscurity of that style by avoiding metaphors and references that uneducated viewers would not understand. However, he had a great influence anyway in later centuries upon
Symbolism, for example by making a fall from a horse a
metaphor for a fall into disgrace or dishonour.
Themes Some of the most common themes of his plays were heavily influenced by his
Classical Christian education by the
Jesuits. For example, as a reader and great admirer of
Scholastic theologians
Saint Thomas Aquinas and
Francisco Suárez, Calderón liked to confront reason against emotion, intellect against instinct, love against vengeance, and understanding against the will. This is not to say, however, that Calderón has never had his critics. In an article for the 1911
Catholic Encyclopedia,
Harvard University Professor
Jeremiah Ford wrote, "Were one to contrast
Shakespeare with
Lope de Vega, he would discover that, while Shakespeare belongs to all men and all time, Lope is the particular property of Spain, and is bounded by national limitations. The character of Calderón is even more limited still; he is not only Spanish rather than universal, but, as a Spaniard, he typifies the sentiments and ideals of a narrowly restricted period, the seventeenth century. It may be added that in his theatre and in his daily life he was a model of the truly Christian and knightly poet of his period. The ideas most distinctive of his age which we see reflected in Calderón's dramatic works are intense devotion to the Catholic Faith;
absolute and unquestioning loyalty to the Spanish sovereign; and a highly developed, even much exaggerated,
feeling of honour." According to Richard E. Chandler and Kessel Schwartz, it is vital to realize, that despite the end of the
Reconquista in 1492 many elements of
Islamic Spain rooted in
Sharia Law still persisted among the Christian population during the lifetime of Calderón; "One must understand the point of honor (
pundonor) and resulting social complications to understand the theatre of Calderón, or, in fact, any of the Golden Age dramatists. A man's honor was a touchy point, based primarily upon a highly refined sentiment of conjugal fidelity but extended to include a man's daughters, married or unmarried, or any other woman in his household. Also, honor had to be kept inviolate -- an extremely difficult thing to accomplish -- and if sullied, had to be avenged. Arising from the Spaniard's sense of personal dignity and his desire to protect his reputation, it became a matter of pride and self-respect to cleanse tarnished honor, which even gossip could blemish. All male members of the household were responsible for protecting the family's name, and no honorable gentleman could leave family honor unavenged. In relationships between the sexes, the
code of honor became especially sinister and led to the most barbarous cruelties. A husband was permitted to
kill his wife if she was even suspected of infidelity, and her lover had to be murdered to avoid a scandal. Love was the great game, and the responsibilities of a household of an attractive woman was a terrible burden and source of worry for the husband or father. One bloody vengeance called for another, and bloody
feuds raged through entire families. The ladies, especially those of Calderón and
Tirso, were highly susceptible to risqué situations and quite unafraid to run the risk of a compromising and dishonoring one. Calderón was a court poet and was consequently versed in all the intricacies of the honor code." Jeremiah Ford continued, "The point of honour, often carried to morbid extremes, provides the motif in such characteristic pieces as the
Alcade de Zalamea, the
Pintor de su deshonra, the
Médico de su honra, and
A secreto agravio secreta venganza. The actuating principle in these works can hardly appeal to us; we can feel little sympathy with a personage who methodically and in cold blood slays the one by whom his honour has been
affronted. For us such an action is a perversion of the ideals of
chivalry." According to Richard E. Chandler and Kessel Schwartz, "
El médico de su honra is the most extreme of his honor tragedies. It revolves around a point of honor and recounts how a husband, suspecting his wife of infidelity, causes her veins to be opened. She bleeds to death, washing his dishonor away with her blood." While acknowledging that the plot of the same play has caused Calderón's humanity to be questioned, Alexander A. Parker has written, "The critics who allege that he approves of the murder of an innocent wife because honour demands it overlook the fact that the horror one feels at this deed is precisely what he intended."
Autos Sacramentales banknote. Indeed, his themes tended to be complex and philosophical, and express complicated states of mind in a manner that few playwrights have been able to manage. Like
Baltasar Gracián, Calderón favoured only the deepest human feelings and moral dilemmas. Since Calderón's plays were usually produced at the court of the King of Spain, he had access to the most modern techniques regarding scenography. He collaborated with
Cosme Lotti in developing complex scenographies that were integrated in some of his plays, specially his most religious-themed ones such as the
Autos Sacramentales, becoming extremely complex allegories of moral, philosophical and religious concepts. According to Richard E. Chandler and Kessel Schwartz, "As a writer of
Autos Sacramentales, Calderón is supreme. The
Auto, cultivated since the time of
Gil Vicente, is a
one act play, generally allegorical in nature, which at one time or another treats the miracle of
Transubstantiation.
Autos were performed in Spain's large cities during the
Corpus Christi festival in the open air on temporary stages set up in some public square. Everyone, including the royalty, attended the public performances, which followed the
Processional of the
Host through the streets to the church. Some believe that these short pieces represent the best of the Calderonian theatre where his fertile imagination had free rein and his sincere religious motives and faith found their purest expression." by
Konstantin Somov (1906). According to
Russian Symbolist poet and
dramatic theorist Vyacheslav Ivanov, "Let us take a look at drama, which in modern history has replaced the spectacles of universal and holy events as reflected in miniature and purely signifying forms on the stages of the
mystery plays. We know that classical French tragedy is one of triumphs of the transformational, decisive idealistic principle. Calderón, however, is different. In him, everything is but a signification of the objective truth of Divine Providence, which governs human destiny. A pious son of the
Spanish Church, he was able to combine all the daring of naive individualism with the most profound realism of the mystical contemplation of divine things." ==Legacy==