-
Views
-
Cite
Cite
Calderón de la Barca, Pedro. Life's a Dream (La vida es sueño), Ed. & trans. Michael Kidd. Boulder: University Press of Colorado 2004. xii + 159 pp. $35 (hardback); $12.95 (paperback). ISBN 0–87081–776–0/777–9, Forum for Modern Language Studies, Volume 43, Issue 3, JULY 2007, Pages 318–319, https://doi.org/10.1093/fmls/cqm018
- Share Icon Share
Extract
A play that moved Schiller and Goethe, Calderón's Life is a Dream is one of western literature's dramatic masterpieces. There are at least fourteen translations into English and a number of adaptations, but this new prose translation will not be redundant. It is based on José Ruano de la Haza's text, as revised for the second Castalia edition (2000). It does not attempt to recreate the rich versification of the original, because it privileges a text that elegantly and naturally recreates the meaning of the original for a contemporary stage performance in English. It is an ideal text for Thespians, drama students or students of world literature. Furthermore, the extensive 88 pages of introduction is a scholarly contribution that summarises pertinently current knowledge of the period's political, intellectual and artistic development, as well as its stage practice, which was unique in seventeenth-century Europe. Kidd builds on present criticism of the play and provides very useful notes for a contemporary performance.