Calderón: The Secular Plays

Although Pedro Calderón de la Barca was one of the greatest and most prolific playwrights of Spain's Golden Age, most of his nonallegorical comedias—118 in all—have remained unknown. Robert ter Horst presents here the first full-length study of these works, a sustained, meditative analysis dealing with more than 80 plays, conveying a sense of the whole of Calderón's secular theater.

To approach so vast a body of literature, Mr. ter Horst examines the meaning and function in Calderón of three...