Religious plays of Pedro Calderón de la Barca

Calderón’s vision of the human world in his secular plays is one of confusion and discord arising out of the inevitable clash of values in the natural order. His religious plays round off his view of life by confronting natural values with supernatural ones. The most characteristic of these religious plays, following the tradition established outside Spain by the Jesuit drama, are based on stories of conversion and martyrdom, usually of the saints of the early church. One of the most beautiful is El príncipe constante (1629; The Constant Prince), which dramatizes the martyrdom of Prince Ferdinand of Portugal. El mágico prodigioso (1637; The Wonder-Working Magician) is a more complex religious play. Los dos amantes del cielo (The Two Lovers of Heaven) and El Joséf de las mujeres (c. 1640; “The Joseph of Womankind”) are the most subtle and difficult. The basic human experience upon which Calderón relies for rational support of religious faith is decay and death and the consequent incapacity of the world to fulfill its promise of happiness. This promise is centred in such natural values as beauty, love, wealth, and power that, although true values if pursued with prudence, cannot satisfy the mind’s aspiration for truth or the heart’s longing for happiness. Only the apprehension of an “infinite Good” can assuage the restlessness of men.

This religious philosophy is given its most moving expression, in terms of Christian dogma, in the autos sacramentales. Seventy-six of these allegorical plays, written for open-air performance on the Feast of Corpus Christi, are extant. In them Calderón brought the tradition of the medieval morality play to a high degree of artistic perfection. The range of his scriptural, patristic, and scholastic learning, together with the assurance of his structural technique and poetic diction, enabled him to endow the abstract concepts of dogmatic and moral theology with convincing dramatic life. At their weakest the autos tend to depend for their effect upon the ingenuity of their allegories, but at their best they are imbued with profound moral and spiritual insight and with a poetic feeling varying from tenderness to forcefulness. La cena de Baltasar (c. 1630; Belshazzar’s Feast) and El gran teatro del mundo (c. 1635; The Great Theatre of the World) are fine examples of Calderón’s early style. The greater complexity of his middle period is represented by No hay más fortuna que Dios (c. 1652; “There Is No Fortune but God”) and Lo que va del hombre a Dios (1652–57; “The Gulf Between Man and God”). But his highest achievement in this type of drama is to be found among those autos of his old age that dramatize the dogmas of the Fall and the redemption, notably La viña del Señor (1674; “The Lord’s Vineyard”), La nave del mercader (1674; “The Merchant’s Ship”), El nuevo hospicio de pobres (1675; “The New Hospital for the Poor”), El día mayor de los días (1678; “The Greatest Day of Days”), and El pastor fido (1678; “The Faithful Shepherd”). Here is found Calderón’s most moving expression of his compassionate understanding of human waywardness.

To have found a dramatic form that conveys the doctrines of the Christian faith gives Calderón a special place in literature, but his greatness is not confined to this. The depth and consistency of his thought, his supremely intelligent craftsmanship and artistic integrity, his psychological insight, and the rationality and humanity of his moral standards make him one of the major figures of world drama.