Life Is a Dream

Dover Publications

Introduction

When Calderon was born in 1600, Spain was the most powerful country in the world, but the seeds had already been planted of a decline that would take it, by the time of his death in 1681, to the humiliating status of a second-tier power. The story of Spain's rise and fall is the sobering tale of a country that collapsed under the burden of its own achievements. Rather than chronicle that process in detail, which would occupy much more space than this Introduction allows, I will begin with three salient general features of early modern Spanish society: religious intensity, inequality before the law, and a deep sense of national pride that suffered serious blows throughout the seventeenth century. These three characteristics are important because they forcefully underpin the ideology of Calderonian Spain and, more broadly, of what is known as the Old Regime, that is, the set of social and political norms that held sway across Europe prior to the French Revolution in 1789. Thus, although none of the characteristics is unique to Spain, they all imply assumptions about the world strikingly different from those that inform modern liberal democracies (including present-day Spain), and their examination will provide an essential preface to the survey of Spanish literature and culture with which I end this section of the Introduction.

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Calderon was born in an age of deep religious conviction. It may be difficult for westerners of the early twenty-first century, anesthetized by the freedom of worship that all liberal democracies guarantee, to grasp the significance of this fact. Especially in Spain, whose Middle Ages were defined by a long struggle to reunite the peninsula under Christian rule, religious belief was not a matter of choice, and Catholicism permeated all aspects of life and determined the course of history. Even language reflects the omnipresence of religion: to speak Spanish became (and remains) synonymous with speaking "Christian," and official correspondence of the period referred to "both Majesties" in deference to God as well as the king. Early modern Spanish identity, to the extent that one can generalize about it, was forged in a crucible of religiosity that never wavered.

Many of the major events and institutions associated with this period came about as a result of that religiosity. The Spanish Inquisition was founded in 1478 with the purpose of rooting out heresy, especially among Jewish (and later Muslim) converts to Christianity. Unlike the Papal Inquisition, which had been in place in other parts of Europe since 1233, the Spanish Inquisition was placed under almost exclusive control of the Spanish kings; the pope's power was limited to naming the Inquisitor General. Because its jurisdiction was limited to baptized Christians, its power was considerably increased when all unbaptized Jews were forced either to convert or to leave the peninsula in 1492. Also in 1492, the pope honored King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella with the title Catholic Monarchs upon their reconquest of Granada, the last independent Muslim kingdom on the peninsula; in 1609 the Moriscos (Moorish converts to Christianity) suffered the same fate the Jews had in 1492. In 1540 Ignatius of Loyola founded the Jesuit Order, dedicated to an active (rather than a speculative) pursuit of faith. The Jesuits provided great impetus to the Counter Reformation, which had come into full swing as Spain united with Rome to stay the rising tide of Protestantism. Costly religious wars between Catholics and Protestants ensued across Europe, exhausting the Spanish treasury in its struggle against countries like England (which it tried to invade) and the Low Countries (part of its Hapsburg patrimony, which it was able to hold only by force) in addition to its traditional Mediterranean rival, France. Finally, a great cost in manpower and wealth was imposed by the evangelization of the indigenous peoples of the Americas.

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As modern readers, we also take for granted the legal sanctity of individual equality and political representation, a product of Enlightenment thought that has become the cornerstone of liberal democracy. But in early modern Europe, no such principles existed in practice. A few examples from Calderon's Spain must suffice.

First, the distribution of power was not equitable. At the top, of course, reigned the king and his court. The powerful nobility, concentrated in the countryside, had its own estate in Parliament, as did the clergy, which, along with the military orders (religious in character), wielded considerable influence. A third parliamentary estate was occupied by the major municipalities, which were considerably diverse in structure and tended to represent a democratizing force. Above the municipal level, however, citizens had no political representation; nor was there trial by a jury of peers, for the king was the ultimate arbiter in cases of injustice. Private property was held primarily by the crown and the first two parliamentary estates, whereas the municipalities were allowed to lease land from the crown for public use. Taxation was regressive, with the poor shouldering the burden of contributions to the state treasury. The inferiority of women, peasants, slaves, Indians, and the unbaptized was routinely (although not universally) asserted, and discrimination against such groups not only prevailed but was also legally sanctioned. For example, in the wake of the expulsion of the Jews, as those who chose to convert rather than leave the country began to occupy civil and clerical positions of authority, promulgation began of the famous "pure-blood" statutes-analogous to the English anti-Catholic laws-which excluded anyone of non-Christian lineage from occupying positions of power. The anguish subsequently felt by the many writers and intellectuals of the period who were of Jewish descent became, according to the twentieth-century Spanish historian Americo Castro, a defining feature of early modern Spanish literature.

Despite all these factors, the term absolute monarchy gives an incorrect impression of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain, which was actually "one of the freest nations in Europe, with active political institutions at all levels. Remarkably free discussion of political affairs was tolerated, and public controversy occurred on a scale paralleled in few other countries." The fact that the system was inequitable does not mean its inequities were not perceived, and the literature of the period amply documents many diverse perspectives regarding justice and equality. As far back as the thirteenth century, St. Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225-1274) had argued for the radical equality of all human souls, and his principles were now invoked in Spain to defend the rights of Indians and women. Typically, however, such arguments were directed against individuals who abused the system or against particular manifestations of the system rather than against the system itself. This is an important distinction. Men like Bartolome de las Casas (1474-1566) and Francisco de Vitoria (1492-1546) argued for humane treatment of the Indians, but they firmly supported the effort to convert them to the Catholic faith. Hence the New Laws of 1542-promulgated largely in response to Las Casas's unpublished manuscript, A Brief Account of the Destruction of the...