Calderon de La Barca, Four Great Plays of the Golden Age »

Rick Davis has translated plays by Calderón, Goldoni, and, with Brian Johnston, several works of Ibsen that have been produced at leading regional theaters such as Berkeley Rep, the Shakespeare Theatre, Alliance Theatre, Center Stage, Alabama Shakespeare and others, and are published by Smith and Kraus. He is also the author of two libretti for composer Kim D. Sherman; an oratorio, The Songbird and the Eagle, and an opera, Love's Comedy. Rick is Artistic Director of Theater of the First Amendment, the professional theater at George Mason University, where he also serves as Associate Provost. He was educated at Lawrence University (BA) and the Yale School of Drama (MFA, DFA).

Life Is A Dream
The Phantom Lady
The Constant Prince
The Great Theatre Of The World

By most accounts the greatest playwright of a great era - the luminous siglo de oro or Spanish Golden Age - Calderón de la Barca (1600-1681) remains best known in the English speaking world for one play, Life Is A Dream. Like any truly great artist, however, Calderón's brilliance is impossible to understand through a single work. His range of subject, style, and tonality is vast, encompassing tragedy, metaphysics, romantic comedy, honor, illusion, reality, and religion. Here is a group of plays that begins to demonstrate the scope of his achievement, in accessible, accurate, production-tested translations. Equally at home in the classroom or the theater, these texts bring a major playwright to life in three dimensions for English-speaking audiences.

Life Is A Dream poses fundamental questions about the nature of existence - are we truly awake or do we dream our way through life? How do we know what is real and what is an illusion? How should we then act? This soaring metaphysical drama has become one of the world's best known and most loved plays.

THE PHANTOM LADY belongs to a delightful tradition of Spanish drama, the comedia de capa y espada or "cape-and-sword play" typified by romantic intrigue and swashbuckling duels. But this is Calderón, so here we find as well a searching exploration of illusion and reality, told against a backdrop of love's triumph over the artificial structures of the honor code.

THE CONSTANT PRINCE portrays a 15th-century episode from the long-fought conflict betweenthe Christian and Islamic worlds in North Africa and the Iberian peninsula. Fernando, the Portuguese warrior known as the Constant Prince, sacrifices himself to a slow and painful death rather than be used as ransom for a conquered city, while his otherworldly devotion to his faith puzzles friend and foe alike. A 17th-century take on a battle from a more distant past that still resonates today, The Constant Prince is notable for the respect, honor, and dignity with which Calderón portrays both sides in this life-and-death struggle.

THE GREAT THEATRE OF THE WORLD represents the auto sacramental or sacred one-act play. This exuberantly metatheatrical work imagines an Author (standing in for God), a stage manager whose name is The World, and a cast of actors who are instructed how to perform a pageant celebrating the Author's creation. They puzzle over how to play their parts-which represent all of humankind-and at the end of the pageant most (but not all!) are rewarded by the Author with a heavenly banquet. This proto-Pirandellian parable is a delightful exploration of the power of theatre as well as a deep examination of faith and free will.

Introduction 1

The Phantom Lady (1629) 21

The Constant Prince (1629) 91

Life Is a Dream (1636) 145

The Great Theater of the World (1648) 231

App. A Translations of Calderon/Translating Calderon 267

App. B Notes and Credits on Premiere Productions 281

Select Bibliography 285

Translator Biography 288