It Is Better than It Was (Masterplots, Definitive Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Pedro Calderón De La Barca
- Type of Work: Drama
- Type of Plot: Cloak-and-sword comedy
- Time of Work: Seventeenth century
- Setting: Vienna
- Principal Characters: Carlos Colona, Don Cesar, Flora, Laura, Fabio, Arnaldo, DInero
- Genres: Drama, Adventure, Comedy, Cloak-and-sword play
- Subjects: Love or romance, Europe or Europeans, Marriage, Seventeenth century, Austria or Austrians, Duels or dueling
- Locales: Vienna, Austria
Critique:
In his early days, Calderón, as the inheritor of the good and the bad of sixteenth-century drama, followed Lope de Vega’s formula for comedy, but with a tightening of the plot and the illumination of some of the extra threads. His cloak-and-sword plays dealt with veiled women, secret rooms, and the hoodwinking of fathers and guardian brothers by sweethearts who, like Lope’s heroines, are frequently motherless, lest fooling a mother might be regarded as disrespect for womanhood. Calderón’s servants, derived from the gracioso invented by Lope, are a combination...
[The entire page is 1384 words long]
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