Pedro Calderon – författare

This translation of one of Calderón’s greatest plays was premiered by the RSC. An ageing painter is driven to double vengeance when his young bride’s lover returns from the dead.Cast size: 16

A classic from the Spanish Golden Age, Calderón's richly poetic, epic masterpiece explores illusion, reality, fate and destiny against the backdrop of a mythical Polish kingdom.'If I'm asleep, don't let me wake. If this is real, don't let me dream.'To protect the country from the horrors prophesied, the young Prince Segismundo is condemned for all eternity to be shut away from his country and his birthright. Banished to a secret world high in the mountains and cut off from the sun, he can only dream of a life reversed: of palaces, empires, freedom – revenge…Helen Edmundson's version of Calderón's Life is a Dream was premiered at the Donmar Warehouse, London, in 2009.

Drama Classics: The World's Great Plays at a Great Little PriceA masterpiece of the Spanish Golden Age.It is foretold that Prince Sigismund will become a tyrant. Alarmed, his father, the king, imprisons him. When he is released for a day as an experiment he proves the omens only too right, and, as a result, is incarcerated once more. Sigismund persuades himself that all that has passed is a dream and emerges to rule wisely and justly.Pedro Calderon's play Life is a Dream was first published in 1635. This English translation by John Clifford was first performed at the Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, in 1998. It is published in the Nick Hern Books Drama Classics series.