Entre Don Pedro Calderón y Don William Cruickshank

This is a review-article of Cruickshank's definitive biography of the first fifty years of Don Pedro Calderón's life. Cruickshank's emphasis is on Don Pedro's secular theatre, with some pertinent allusions to his autos, poems, short pieces, palace plays and the rewriting of certain plays. The article examines Cruickshank's masterful outline of the literary, social, political and religious life of Madrid in the first half of the seventeenth century; the connections he makes between actual events in the dramatist's life and incidents in his plays; the political allusions and implied criticism of the monarchy that he finds in some plays, especially those performed before the Court; and the wealth of personal details that this admirable biography has managed to unearth. My conclusion is that this is one of the most significant and illuminating works published on the life and works of Don Pedro Calderón in the last few decades

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