We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 March 2010
In the Palace of the Buen Retiro, in the Coliseum, a play was performed in May for the birthday of the Queen. The author was Calderón. The play used the most extraordinarily elaborate costumes, scenery, and effects ever seen in the theatre. The set changed seven times! There were lights for illumination! The production lasted a full seven hours! First, the Monarchs saw it, then the second day the Councils of Government, then the third the people of Madrid. And it ran for 37 days more, the longest run ever in Madrid.
Such was one journalist's account, in the Anales de Madrid for 1652, of Calderón's Lafiera, el rayo,y lapiedra, a mythological extravaganza. It could have been any of Calderón's mythological showpieces. The exuberance, the massive attention to detail, the sheer weight of theatrical effect are remarkable. Only Broadway, Hollywood, or the Lido can provide any points of comparison. Indeed, Valbuena Prat said that Calderón's mythological plays were the genre “most akin to current tastes and sensibilities.” They are artificial, and shamelessly so, “the merest and purest artifice,” the elevation of artifice itself to its own subject matter, as one critic put it. They are virtuoso pieces of artificiality. Conventional in every way, they are brilliant crystallizations of Calderón's theatrical showmanship. They sustain an illusion that is so elaborate that it becomes, necessarily, self-conscious. Indeed, they are so artificial that even when they falter they come crashing down awash with brilliance.
Looked at from the point of view of action, motivation, or characterization, these plays are anomalous.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
