Life Is A Dream And Dreams Are More Than Reality Essay Example

How a theatrical text could be accurate in describing humans weaknesses? Perhaps by following the life of a human being through a fictional world of dreams. Pedro Calderon de la Barca investigated life and the all the basic virtues like value and morality in his theatrical texts. He perfected at maximum the Spanish theatre and accomplished with great ability to weave the characteristic of the theater of Lopez de Vega with the phasing out of certain realistic forms. The European Baroque theater with Calderon reaches, perhaps, its highest point. One of his most famous plays is Life is a Dream. The story of prince Sigismundo of Poland follows a mostly linear path of a repetitive cyclic episodes. Calderon hided the key to fully understand his text along the action of the character of Segismundo. Life is a Dream is precisely about a simple truth: even the most virtuous people can turn evil.
The prince Sigismondo is locked up in a tower isolated and away from the royal palace because of an ominous prophecy hanging over his head. His father, King Basilio, read it in the firmament during the eve of his birth. After some years, Basilio transferred the prince to the court, with the help of a narcotic, for a decisive test about the prophecy. Sigismundo indulged in violent excesses due to his nature of deducted: he attacked with violence and then, once again, he was imprisoned in his desolate prison. Sigismundo was devoured by pangs of doubt and of revenge for what he had done until, thanks to a popular revolt, he returns to the court. After the victory over King Basilio and his troops, the prince finally had got the title and became the legitimate sovereign over the kingdom. Sigismundo had passed a great amount of time agonizing between the two opposite states of reality and dream and those prisons days has made him thoughtful and wise. In fact, the prince has constantly been suspended between life and illusory dreams so he now forgave the father, who firstly wanted to humiliate, and along with the realms he gained a restored sense of peace and justice. Surprisingly there is no trace of dreams into the text of Calderon: this is not the story of a prince who dreams of ascending to power, but the drama of a prince trying to regain control in his own reality. Dream is a route that leads to a condition elusive and precarious and also a state of fiction that brings a partial paralysis of the will in every human being.
If the main character Sigismundo is the metaphor for the whole work of Calderon it will be useful, then, to follow his psychological evolution. Four circumstances, placed in the first part of the drama, conduct to recognize Sigismundo as an evil character: all these episodes are relate to his experience in jail, when he was forced to the loss of freedom. After so much hard life and after such a long and brutal agony Sigismundo transformed his attitude into a grim behaviour and his princely birth and his noble lineage did not helped him. The first of the four episodes regards the relationship with Rosaura. The loving relationship evolves towards darker nuances until the girl is threatened by Sigismundo of sexual violence. The second fact concerns directly Sigismundo: he committed murder of a servant during the early stages of the representation. A murder is also the center of the third episode: Sigismundo, in fact, tries to kill Clotaldo. Fourth and final reason is Sigismundo's violent anger towards his father. But life is a dream and nothing must be taken for granted. Thanks to the effect of two sudden epiphanies, Sigismundo becomes a positive character and turns his action towards good deeds. The first epiphany occurred while he was trying to define identity of life and dreams. Changes are always around the corner: for a moment Sigismundo was at the royal palace and suddenly he wakes up back in prison. His experiences had acquired the same consistency as dreams. The second epiphany happened during a dialogue scene with Clotaldo in the second act: the old mentor said to Sigismundo that nothing would be lost, even in dreams, by doing good. After these two moments the character of Sigismundo became in full the symbol of Calderon's reflection about the goodness. The goodness is considered a virtue, a virtue that is essential to a civilized life. The virtues are meant to build the texture of reality and the relationship between people. If it is so, then love is the most important virtue among all. Love allows people to feel accepted. To Calderon, being loved it means to exist, to be loved is, then, the very substance of life. A wiser Sigismundo undertake actions that accord him to a more peaciful existence. Even in this case there are four distinct episodes during which we assist at the change occurred in his mind and soul. First of all Sigismundo marries Estrela so that she can become a very queen. Secondly he forgives his father for all the harassment suffered by the child. Thirdly he makes sure that Rosaura could restore her honor by marrying Astolfo. Fourth and final episode: Sigismundo decided to finally forgive his father.
Despite these positive behaviors, Sigismundo is not immune to evilness. Disappointments and clashes with a conventional reality and with courtiers intrigues little by little had made the hero doubtful and had injured his rehabilitation and his redemption. The emergence of feelings of kindness and love could not fill the gap between the unreal worlds and his dreamed redemption. For example he imprisoned the soldier who set him free. Sigismundo justified himself explaining that as a soldier he, in fact, had betrayed his father by letting his prisoner free. Sigismundo had adjudged the soldier guilty saying that once the soldier was a traitor he would be a traitor for ever. The thing that makes this episode so terrible is the fact that Sigismundo himself had been locked up in prison and therefore knows that it is a terrible reality.
In some way Sigismundo, in taking this decision, is trying to protect the king and therefore his same ego. The prince works on himself before any other transformation of its role in the civilized world and eventually arrives at the most consistent and rigorous of all the roles: he became the bearer of cultural order. He is truly the man capable of tighter control of reason over the heart's reasons. The lines of characters in the drama are initially weaved together by misfortune. However at the ending of the piece a compensation for the injustice suffered is granted to Sigismundo by the dual rediscovering, both metaphorical and actual, of his father. This acknowledgement also takes on the characteristics of a recapture of identity or a new moral awareness enjoyed both in its transcendent values and in its practical implications. The meaning of the character of Sigismundo then is really the heart of a more complex message embedded inside "Life is dream". Calderon wrote his text not only as an enchanting adventure but also as moral teaching.
Even the most virtuous man, even Sigismundo, can commit evil acts. However, as we have seen, the effects of love could have great consequences transforming dreams or nightmares into reality. Rosaura during a dialogue tells that nothing could be saved by pursuing misbehavior. However, for Calderon, this is another opportunity to show how love can change things and, at the same time, to suggest Sigismundo as human and fallible by reaffirming his main message that if love is a dream, then love could be real.