nales de Quince Dias_. A curious contemporary French pamphlet
on him, _Histoire admirable et declin pitoyable advenue en la personne
d'unfawory de la Cour d'Espagne,_ is reprinted by M.E. Fournier in
_Varietes historiques_ (Paris, 1855), vol. i.

(D. H.)

CALDERON DE LA BARCA, PEDRO (1600-1681), Spanish dramatist and poet, was
born at Madrid on the 17th of January 1600. His mother, who was of Flemish
descent, died in 1610; his father, who was secretary to the treasury, died
in 1615. Calderon was educated at the Jesuit College in Madrid with a view
to taking orders and accepting a family living; abandoning this project, he
studied law at Salamanca, and competed with success at the literary fetes
held in honour of St Isaidore at Madrid (1620-1632). According to his
biographer, Vera Tassis, Calderon served with the Spanish army in Italy and
Flanders between 1625 and 1635; but this statement is contradicted by
numerous legal documents which prove that Calderon resided at Madrid during
these years. Early in 1629 his brother Diego was stabbed by an actor who
took sanctuary in the convent of the Trinitarian nuns; Calderon and his
friends broke into the cloister and attempted to seize the offender. This
violation was denounced by the fashionable preacher, Hortensio Felix
Paravicino (_q.v._), in a sermon preached before Philip IV.; [v.04 p.0985]
Calderon retorted by introducing into _El Principe constante_ a mocking
reference (afterwards cancelled) to Paravicino's gongoristic verbiage, and
was committed to prison. He was soon released, grew rapidly in reputation
as a playwright, and, on the death of Lope de Vega in 1635, was recognized
as the foremost Spanish dramatist of the age. A volume of his plays, edited
by his brother Jose in 1636, contains such celebrated and diverse
productions as _La Vida es sueno, El Purgatorio de San Patricia, La
Devocion de la cruz, La Dama duende_ and _Peor esta que estaba_. In
1636-1637 he was made a knight of the order of Santiago by Philip IV., who
had already commissioned from him a series of spectacular plays for the
royal theatre in the Buen Retiro. Calderon was almost as popular with the
general public as Lope de Vega had been in his zenith; he was, moreover, in
high favour at court, but this royal patronage did not help to develop the
finer elements of his genius. On the 28th of May 1640 he joined a company
of mounted cuirassiers recently raised by Olivares, took part in the
Catalonian camp