Share This Page
Allegories of Kingship
Calderón and the Anti-Machiavellian Tradition
200 pages | 6 x 9 | 1995
Cloth edition is not available
ISBN 978-0-271-02667-1 | paper: $29.95 sh
“An important addition to the critical literature on the relationship of drama to kingship in Golden-Age Spain. Its consistently clear elucidation of Calderón’s political theatre deserves a wide readership.” —M. L. R.
An analysis of the political theater of the Spanish dramatist Calderón, emphasizing his allegorical treatment of kingship and statecraft and his attention to the changing conditions of monarchical rule in the seventeenth century.
"An important addition to the critical literature on the relationship of drama to kingship in Golden-Age Spain. Its consistently clear elucidation of Calderón's political theatre deserves a wide readership."—MLR
This study examines issues in politics and political theory in selected works of Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600-1681), the major dramatist of the middle and later decades of the seventeenth century in Spain. By analyzing secular dramas (comedias) and religious plays (autos sacramentales), Stephen Rupp demonstrates Calderón’s awareness of the ideas and institutions of power in Hapsburg Spain and explores the terms of his intervention in the long debate over the principles of Christian statecraft. Through references to Rivadeneira, Saavedra Fajardo, and Quevedo, Rupp describes the anti-Machiavellian theory of kingship that informs Calderón's political theater.
Rupp's argument proceeds from abstract principles of political theory to particular institutions and events at the Hapsburg court. Discussion of two comedias (La vida es sueno and La cisma de Inglaterra) and five autos (La vida es sueno, A Dios por razon de Estado, El maestrazgo del Toison, El nuevo palacio del Retiro, and El lirio y la azucena) demonstrates Calderón’s assimilation of true reason of state to providence, his attitudes concerning the conciliar system and the regime of the royal favorite or valido, and his allegorical treatment of significant state occasions.
Published with the aid of a subvention from the Spanish Ministry of Culture.
Stephen Rupp is Associate Professor of Spanish at the University of Toronto and a Fellow of Victoria College.