Out of the Wings

La vida es sueño (1635), Pedro Calderón de la Barca

Life Is A Dream (2008), translated by Rick Davis

End of Act II and top of act III trans. Davis

Edition

Calderón de la Barca, Pedro. 2008. Calderón de la Barca: Four Great Plays of the Golden Age, trans. Rick Davis. Lyme, NH, Smith and Kraus

Context:

From the end of Act II and the top of Act III, including Segismundo’s 'dream' speech and Clarín’s prison lament—two flights of rhetorical fancy in distinctly different keys.

Sample text

CLOTALDO: (aside)

The King is touched
By what he’s heard.
(aloud)
Since we were talking
About that eagle when you fell asleep,
Your dreams have been of empire;
But in those dreams, it would be well
From this day on to honor the one
Who brought you up so carefully,
Segismundo; since even in dreams
You shouldn’t forget to do what’s right.

(HE exits)

SEGISMUNDO:

That’s true; so let’s restrain
This wild beast’s nature,
This fury, this ambition
In case sometime we dream again.
And indeed we will, since we find ourselves
In such a singular world,
That to live is just to dream,
And experience teaches me
That the man who lives, dreams
What he is until he awakens.
The king dreams that he is king, and lives
With this illusion, commanding,
Governing, disposing.
And all the loud applause that he receives
Is merely lent to him, written on the wind,
And death transforms it soon enough
To ashes—a powerful misfortune!
Who would want to reign,
Seeing that one has to wake up
To the dream of death!
The rich man dreams his riches,
That only offer him more cares;
The poor man dreams he suffers
His misery and poverty;
He dreams—the one who is beginning to thrive,
He dreams—the one who toils and tries,
He dreams—the one who injures and offends;
And finally, in this world,
Everyone dreams the thing they are,
Though no one understands this.
I dream that I am here
Weighed down and shackled by these chains,
And I dreamed that in another state,
I saw myself much happier.
What is life? A frenzy.
What is life? An illusion,
A shadow, a fiction.
The greatest good is smaller than it seems,
Since all life is a dream,
And even dreams themselves are only dreams.

End of Act Two.

ACT THREE

The Tower.

(Enter CLARÍN)

CLARÍN:

Because of what I know,
I’m a prisoner in an enchanted tower.
What will they do to me
For what I don’t know,
If they’ve practically killed me for what I do?
On top of it all, why should I
Have to suffer this living death
On an empty stomach?
I feel sorry for myself.
Everyone will say: “that, I believe.”
And so they should believe it;
Because this silence doesn’t fit the name Clarín.
I can’t keep quiet.
Keeping me company
Here, if I’ve got this right,
Are spiders and rats.
Look what sweet little songbirds they are!
My poor head still aches
From my dreams last night,
Which featured the sound of
A thousand shawms and trumpets,
A strange, illusory procession
With crosses and flagellants; and of these,
Some are rising, others falling,
Some are fainting when they see
The blood that others spill.
But actually, truth to tell,
I’m faint with hunger,
Since I find myself in prison,
Where now every day
I study the philosophy of the Empty Plato
And at night I recite the story
Of the Lost Supper.
If silence is a saintly virtue,
Then in the new calendar,
Saint Secret is the one for me,
Because I fast for him without a break;
Although I guess this punishment I suffer
Is well deserved,
Since a silent servant
Is a sacrilegious sinner.

Copyright

The above sample taken from the translation Life Is A Dream (2008) by Rick Davis is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Life's a Dream (2004), translated by Michael Kidd

ACT ONE Scene One

Context:

This is the beginning of the play. (Stage directions that appear in brackets are the translator's interpolations.)

Sample text

([Deserted mountainside at twilight, near the entrance to a tower.] Enter ROSSAURA at the top of a mountain, disguised as a man dressed for the road. She makes her way down the mountain as she begins to speak, [addressing the horse from which she has been thrown].)
ROSSAURA:: Hippogriff, monstrous hippogriff, peer of the wind! You're a lightning bolt with no flame, a bird with no colour, a fish with no scales, a brute with no base instinct. Where do you speed off to: bucking, lurching, and bolting before the obscure labyrinth of those barren crags? Stay, then, on this mountaintop, a Phaethon to the brutes; while I, a woman with no direction but that offered by the laws of fate, will descend in blindness and desperation the twisted face of this lofty cliff, whose scowling brow withers in the sun. Poorly, Poland, do you greet the foreigner, for you write his entrance to your sands in blood, and hardly is he come when he comes into hardship. I'm at the mercy of my luck, but where did an unlucky wretch ever turn for mercy?; (Enter BUGLE, a foolish lackey.)
BUGLE:: Make that two unlucky wretches, and don't forget me back at camp when you start lodging complaints. For if it was two of us who left our fatherland to seek adventures, and two of us who, amid misfortune and madness, arrived at this spot, and two of us who came rolling down the mountain, can't I rightly complain if you make me party to the sorrow and leave me out of the settlement?
ROSSAURA:: I didn't want to involve you in my complaints, Bugle, and take away your right to consolation through the expression of your own distress; for there is such pleasure to be gained from complaining, a philosopher once said, that one should go in search of misfortunes just to be able to complain about them.
BUGLE:: That philosopher was a scruffy drunk who deserves a thousand slaps in the face! I'd like to see how he enjoys lamenting then. But really, my lady, what are we to do now: on foot, alone, and lost at such an hour on a deserted mountainside, with the sun heading fast for the horizon?
ROSSAURA:: Who ever heard of such strange happenings? Yet unless my vision suffers from the deceptions of fantasy, I think I see some kind of building in the flickering twilight.
BUGLE:: Either my desire is deceiving me, or I see the same thing.
ROSSAURA:: Lying crudely among the barren crags, it's a palace so minute that even the sunlight barely reaches it. Its crude architecture is such that it could pass for a boulder that rolled off the mountaintop and settled at the foot of all these rocks and crags that strive toward the sun's warmth.
BUGLE:: Let's draw closer and not lose time in speculation, my lady, for it's preferable to be received with generosity by whoever lives inside.
ROSSAURA:: The door—or better yet, the gloomy mouth—is open, and from its depths the night, conceived inside, issues forth.; (They hear the sound of chains [from inside the tower].)
BUGLE:: What's that sound, heavens!
ROSSAURA:: I'm paralyzed, a mass of frozen fire.
BUGLE:: I hear the sound of chains; I'll be damned if it's not the ghost of a galley slave. My fear says it all.; (SIGISMUND's voice is heard from inside the tower.)
SIGISMUND:: Oh, what a miserable, unlucky wretch am I!
ROSSAURA:: What's that sad voice I hear! I'm struggling with new sufferings and torments!
BUGLE:: And I with new fears.
ROSSAURA:: Bugle!
BUGLE:: My lady!
ROSSAURA:: We must flee the severities of this haunted tower!
BUGLE:: I don't even have the stomach to flee, should I be forced to.
ROSSAURA:: Is there not a faint light in that decrepit glow, that pale star, which, in faltering swoons, flickering warmth, and trembling radiance, makes the dark room more shadowy with its feeble glow? Yes, for in its flicker I can make out, though from afar, a dark prison that serves as grave to a living corpse. And to my even greater astonishment, clothed in the skins of a beast lies a man bound in chains and accompanied only by the light. Since we can't flee, let's listen to his misfortunes from here and see what he says.; (A curtain is drawn back to reveal SIGISMUND with a candle, bound in chains and dressed in animal skins.)
SIGISMUND:: Oh, what a miserable, unlucky wretch am I! I seek to understand, heavens, given the way you treat me, what crime I committed against you with my birth; although if I was born, I already understand my crime. Your sentence and its harshness have due cause, for birth itself is man's greatest offence. But I would just like to know, to ease my distress—leaving aside, heavens, the offence of birth—what else I did to merit further punishment. Weren't others born? And if so, what privileges were they granted that I've never enjoyed? Birds are born, and with the regalia that decorates them in finest beauty, hardly do they attain the stature of a feathered flower or a winged bouquet when they cut swiftly through the ethereal chambers, overcoming devotion to the nest that they leave behind in tranquillity. Yet I, with more soul, have less liberty? Brutes are born, with their coats of dappled beauty, and hardly do they reflect the constellations above, thanks to divine artistry, when they become reckless and cruel, and human necessity, teaching them cruelly, makes them monsters in its labyrinth. Yet I, with gentler instinct, have less liberty? Fish are born, unbreathing miscarriages of algae and slime, and hardly do these scaly ships see themselves upon the waves when they begin to lurch in all directions, measuring the ocean's vastness with the full capacity of their frigid core. Yet I, with greater will, have less liberty? Streams are born, snakes winding through the flowers, and hardly do these silvery serpents begin to twist among the flowers when they celebrate with music the mercy of the heavens that grant them majestic flight through the open field. Yet I, with more life, have less liberty? Suffering like this turns me into a volcano, an Etna, and I should like to rip pieces of my heart from my breast. What law, what sentence, what cause is capable of denying men the sweet privilege, the fundamental charter that God grants to crystalline waters, to fish, to brutes, and to birds?

Copyright

The above sample taken from the translation Life's a Dream (2004) by Michael Kidd is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

ACT TWO Scene One

Context:

Prince Sigismund, having been raised in a tower his entire life, is brought in his sleep to the Polish palace; when he awakens he is informed that he is king.

Sample text

CLOTHOLD:: Your Highness, my lord, allow me to kiss your hand; for my honour will be the first to offer you obedience.
SIGISMUND:: (Aside.) This is Clothold, so how is it that he who mistreats me in prison now treats me with such respect? What's happening to me?
CLOTHOLD:: In the immense confusion of your new surroundings, your thought and reason must be plagued by thousands of doubts. But I want to free you from all of them if—if that's possible—because you need to know, my lord, that you are the Crown Prince of Poland. If you have lived secluded and hidden from sight, it was due to the inclemency of fate, which sanctions a thousand tragedies for this realm once the kingly laurel leaf adorns your noble brow. Yet in the hope that, with caution, you might overcome the stars, for a virtuous man can do so, you've been brought to the palace from the tower in which you lived while your spirit was in the power of sleep. Your father, the king my lord, will come to see you shortly, and from him, Sigismund, you'll learn the rest.
SIGISMUND:: Why you vile, contemptible traitor! What more need I learn, now that I know my true identity, in order to proclaim my pride and power from this point forward? How could you betray your fatherland by hiding me away, for you have denied me, against reason and law, my entitlement?
CLOTHOLD:: Oh, miserable me!
SIGISMUND:: You were a traitor to the law, a sycophant to the king, and a cruel jailor to me; and thus the king, the law, and I, amid such monstrous misfortune, condemn you to die by my hands.
SERVANT 2:: My lord…
SIGISMUND:: Let no one try to stop me, for it would be a useless endeavour and, by God, if you get in my way, I'll throw you out that window.
SERVANT 1:: Flee, Clothold.
CLOTHOLD:: (Aside.) Poor Sigismund, what excessive pride you demonstrate, unaware that it's all a dream! (He flees.)
SERVANT 2:: Beware that…
SIGISMUND:: Out of my way.
SERVANT 2:: …he was obeying his king.
SIGISMUND:: When the law isn't just, the king needn't be obeyed; and at any rate, I was his prince.
SERVANT 2:: It wasn't for him to decide whether it was just or not.
SIGISMUND:: You're asking for it, it would seem, with all that yapping.
BUGLE:: What the prince says is very right, and what you did was very wrong.
SERVANT 1:: Who gave you permission to speak?
BUGLE:: I took it upon myself.
SIGISMUND:: Who are you, pray tell?
BUGLE:: A busybody, a job in which I reign supreme, because I'm the nosiest person on the face of the earth.
SIGISMUND:: You're the only one in this princely world I find gratifying.
BUGLE:: My lord, I'm a great gratifier of all worldly princes.; (Enter AISTULF [hat in hand].)
AISTULF:: Infinitely lucky is this day, O prince, in which you proclaim yourself Poland's sun and fill its horizons with the brightness and bliss of your divine radiance, for you appear like the sun from beneath the mountains! Rise, then, and may the shining laurel leaf, so slow in crowning your brow, be as slow in withering. [He dons his hat.]
SIGISMUND:: God keep you.
AISTULF:: I'll forgive your meagre greeting only because you don't recognize me. I am Aistulf, Duke of Muscovy, and your cousin; we must treat each other as equals.
SIGISMUND:: I said 'God keep you.' What more do you want? But since you don't find my greetings suitable to your high birth, next time I'll say 'God damn you!'
SERVANT 2:: (To AISTULF.) Consider, your highness, that he was raised in the mountains and treats everyone accordingly. (To SIGISMUND.) Aistulf, my lord, prefers to be addressed as…
SIGISMUND:: I found it irritating the way he spoke to me so gravely, and the first thing he did was don his hat.
SERVANT 2:: He's titled.
SIGISMUND:: I'm more entitled!
SERVANT 2:: All the same, it's fitting that there be greater decorum between the two of you than with others.
SIGISMUND:: Who asked for your opinion anyway?; (Enter STELLA.)
STELLA:: Your highness, my lord, I welcome you warmly to the royal family, which gratefully receives you and desires your presence, and where, despite past deceptions, we wish you an august and celebrated reign and a life measured in centuries rather than years.
SIGISMUND:: Tell me now, who is this imperial beauty? Who is this human goddess at whose divine feet Heaven surrenders its radiance? Who is this beautiful woman?
BUGLE:: She is, my lord, your cousin Stella.
SIGISMUND:: Stella…Stellar? More like Solar! [To STELLA.] Although it were well to wish me well on the wealth that I inherit, I deserve more well-wishing just for having seen you today; and thus, I appreciate your well-wishing for finding myself before such unmerited wealth. Stella—whose waking is enough to please the brightest star—what is left for the sun to do if you rise with the day? Allow me to kiss your hand, from whose snowy chalice the gentle breeze drinks in radiance.
STELLA:: Be a little more gentlemanly in the presence of the court.
AISTULF:: (Aside.) If he takes her hand, I'm finished!
SERVANT 2:: (Aside.) Aistulf's dismay is palpable; I must put a stop to this. (To SIGISMUND.) Beware, my lord, that it's not right to be so forward, and Aistulf is…
SIGISMUND:: Didn't I tell you to stay out of my way?
SERVANT 2:: I'm only saying what's right.
SIGISMUND:: Everything you say annoys me. Nothing is right that contradicts my delight.
SERVANT 2:: But my lord, I remember hearing you say that it's well to obey and serve what's right.
SIGISMUND:: You also heard me say that I'd throw anyone who annoyed me off that balcony.
SERVANT 2:: Men of my standing can't be treated that way.
SIGISMUND:: Oh no? So help me God, I'll test that theory!; (He grabs the SERVANT and rushes offstage, followed by the others. He returns shortly [with the others, minus the SERVANT].)
AISTULF:: I can't believe what I've just seen!
STELLA:: Help, everyone! (Exit.)

(Aside.)

Copyright

The above sample taken from the translation Life's a Dream (2004) by Michael Kidd is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

ACT THREE Scene Two

Context:

The country has descended into civil war, with the masses supporting the natural-born prince and the aristocracy supporting the foreign-born duke of Muscovy. King Vasily recognizes his error in imprisoning the prince, noting that his actions have precipitated exactly the calamity he'd aimed to prevent.

Sample text

VASILY:

Who, Aistulf, is wise enough to curb the fury of a runaway horse? Who can detain the current of a defiant river in its downhill rush to the sea? Who is valiant enough to stop a boulder that has broken free of the mountaintop? Well that's all easy in comparison to halting a defiant and reckless mob. The proof is in the clashing cries of Poland's rival parties, which penetrate the innermost mountains with thunderous echoes of 'Long live Aistulf!' or 'Long live Sigismund!' The coronation site, fallen prey to wayward aspirations and hidden loyalties, has become a gloomy theatre where importunate fortune stages her tragedies.

AISTULF:

We must suspend the celebration and postpone the applause and flattering delights that your fortunate hand promised me; for if Poland, which I hope to rule, today refuses obedience to me, it is to make me earn it first. Give me a horse, and let him who boasts with thunder descend like lightning, full of arrogance. (Exit.)

VASILY:

The inevitable has little remedy, and the foreseen carries considerable risk; if it's meant to be, there's no defence against it, for he who most tries to avoid it most precipitates its arrival. What harsh logic! What awful circumstances! What tremendous horror! He who believes he's running from danger ends up running into it. In trying to avoid it, I have ruined myself. I, and I alone, have destroyed my fatherland.

(Enter STELLA.)

STELLA:

If you do not act, your majesty, to put a stop to the chaos that has broken out and, spreading from one side to the next, polarizes streets and squares, you will soon find your kingdom swimming in waves of scarlet, dyed in the crimson of its own blood; sadly, misfortune and tragedy are already widespread. Such is the ruin of your empire, such the might of harsh and bloody inclemency that it amazes the eyes and alarms the ears. The sun is startled and the wind falters; the rocks form tombstones and the flowers cluster on gravesites; every building is a mausoleum and every soldier, a living skeleton.

Copyright