Don Pedro Calderon de la Barca (1600 81) was, with Lope de Vega, the greatest exponent of Spanish Golden Age drama. Professor Parker's essays are the fruits of a highly distinguished career spanning forty-five years. They provide a wide-ranging survey of Calderon's secular, three-act plays (comedias) through detailed analyses of individual works. The themes found in the plays are studied in relation to the background of ideas in seventeenth-century Spain and to the development of Calderon's own view of the intellectual life and the social, ethical and moral problems of this age. From the...