Spanish · 1600–1681
Calderón was born in Madrid, educated by Jesuits, studied law at Salamanca, and killed a man in a duel before he was twenty-five. He wrote for Philip IV's court theatre at the Buen Retiro, staged plays with machinery that made mountains open and ships sink, fought in the Catalan revolt of 1640, and took holy orders in 1651, after which he wrote almost nothing but autos sacramentales — one-act allegories performed on carts for Corpus Christi. He produced around a hundred and twenty full-length plays and eighty autos. Where Lope de Vega wrote fast and loose, Calderón built: symmetrical plots, verse that argues with itself, honour codes carried to their murderous conclusion. Life Is a Dream gave European thought one of its permanent images, the prince raised in a tower who cannot tell waking from sleep. Schopenhauer quoted him, Shelley translated him, and the German Romantics ranked him with Shakespeare.