'La vida es sueño - ¿o risa?': Calderón Parodies the "auto"

Abstract

The long-established conception of Calderon as a supremely Catholic and sober if not sombre dramatist derives from his readers' primary focus on his serious dramas and his autos sacramentales.1 Without questioning the importance of these works, I would like to suggest that we tend to overlook another side of his writings, the playful and parodic visions of life and stage versions of life that he offers in a number of entremeses and mojigangas. In this essay, therefore, I would like to bring these two aspects of Calderon into the sort of creative tension in which they existed—or co-existed—on the stages of Madrid in his lifetime. To do so, I will concentrate on one mojiganga, the delightfully funny Mojiganga de las visiones de la muerte which Calderon apparently wrote for performance with the auto La vida es sueno.2 I will be examining the logic of its comedy; its play on and against the conventions, both thematic and structural, of the autos in general and of La vida es sueno in particular; and its functi...