Life Is a Dream

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Calderón's La vida es sueño (1635) is the supreme achievement of Spanish Golden Age drama: Prince Segismundo, imprisoned from birth by a prophecy that he will be a tyrant, is given one day of freedom by his father — then told it was all a dream. The philosophical core — can we distinguish waking life from dream? does virtue matter if life is illusion? — engages the great questions of Baroque philosophy with theatrical grandeur. FitzGerald's English version is the most widely read translation, though later scholars have found it somewhat free. The play's influence on European Romanticism and on later theater of the absurd has been enormous.