CALDERON DE LA BARCA, DON PEDRO, • great Spanish dramatist, born of noble parents at Madrid, in 1601, suggests a striking parallel with Lope de Vega, his celebrated countryman and forerunner in the same career. Both were wonderfully precocious: Lope wrote plays at the age of eleven or twelve, and Calderon exhibited uo inferior genius at thirteen in his ' Cerro del Cielo' (the ileaveuly Chariot). Both devoted the rigour of life to the military profession, and their maturity to the ecclesiastical order ; and the poetic talent of both con tinued to advanced age. Both of them acquired reputation and oven affluence from a gift proverbially doomed to penury, and at the most hardly promising more than posthumous renown.
Lope and Calderon gave the law to the Spanish theatre. With all their irregularity, they both exhibit a singular mixture of sublimity and absurdity, with frequent flashes of geuius, and passages of striking truth to nature; thus frequently redeeming their numeroue faults, and making amends for many to us now very ridiculous 'moues. The fertility of those two writers is not the least surprising part of their history. Lope added 2000, and Calderon 500 pieces at least to the tuitional dramatic stock. Their success could not fail to call forth numerous imitators at home and abroad : Corneille, there is little doubt, formed his lieraclius upon the play of Calderon, as he certainly took his Cid and his alenteur from Guillermo di Castro. Moliare'e 'Femmes rovantes' was suggested by Calderon's ' No Lai buries con el Amor' (Love Is no Joke); and Scarron grossly disfigured, under the title of ' La fausse Apparence,' Calderon's 'Nunca to peon es cierto' (The worst is never true). The French translations by Linguet doubtless contributed largely to produce this effect. On Linguet's ' Viol puni,' a translation of Calderon's Alcalde de Zalamea,' the well known Collet d'Ilerbois built his ' Paysan magistrat.' Not to mention numerous other instances of a similar kind, it should not be forgotten that Calderon's 'Secrete a voces' (The published Secret) has appeared in the Italian, French, and German languages.
Calderon's talents, which had been early manifested at school under the Jesuits, developed at Salamanca, and already admired in the Spanish possessions of Italy and the Low Countries, were at last encouraged by the patronage of Philip IV., who bestowed on him a knighthood of Santiago in 1636; invited him to Madrid in 1640 to write the Certamen de Amor y Zelos' (the Contest between Love and Jealousy), a sort of festival to be performed on the lake of Buen Retire; and soon raised his allowance to an escudo more per day.
Subsequently, in 1649, he intrusted to his taste and ingenuity the plan and directions of soma triumphal arches, under which the royal bride Mary Anna of Austria was to pass.
At the age of fifty Calderon entered the church, and two years afterwards, the king bestowed on him a chaplaincy of Toledo. In 1663 he gave him another similar piece of preferment, with a hand some pension charged on the revenue of Sicily, and other similar acknowledgments of his services and merits. During the long period of thirty-seven years he wrote, by special commission of the muni cipality of Madrid, and of other cities, such as Toledo, Sevilla, and Granada, about 100 ' Autos Sacmmentales; or sacred pieces, which resemble those of the 16th century, commonly called Mysteries.' The 'Autos' of Calderon soon superseded those of all previous Spanish authors; and to their composition the poet devoted the remaining thirty years of his life after he had entered the ecclesiastical profession. In his eightieth year he wrote his Hado y Divisa.' Aa the booksellers were now selling spurious works under his name, he was urged by the Duke of Veragnas to make a true list of all his works, but he merely sent a list of his 'Autos,' expressing, on religious grounds, very little concern for the rest.
Some of the ' Autos' of Calderon, especially that entitled La Devocion de Is Cruz' (the Devotion of the Cross, meaning its miracles), are the best productions of the kind. Augustus Schlegel has translated this work, with some of the beat of his dramas, such as El Principe constante,' a tragedy which might be called the Lusitanian Regulus for its Portuguese lofty subject. It is indeed Calderon 'a masterpiece, and displays the full lustre of his genius. He wrote likewise a poem in octaves on the Novisimos,' or Postrimerias ' (the old scholastic and ascetic collective denomination of death, judgment, heaven, and hell). There is also among his works a discourse on painting, ' La Nobleza de Is Pintura ;' another in vindication of the stage, 'Defense de Is Comedia;' and many songs, sonnets, and ballads, with numerous short poems to which the highest prizes were adjudged on various occasions.