Life Is a Dream_Pedro Calderon De La Barca

by Pedro Calderón de La Barca

  With salutary garb and nourishment,

  Instruct his soul in what no soul may miss

  Of holy faith, and in such other lore

  As may solace his life-imprisonment,

  And tame perhaps the Savage prophesied

  Toward such a trial as I aim at now,

  And now demand your special hearing to.

  What in this fearful business I have done,

  Judge whether lightly or maliciously,—

  I, with my own and only flesh and blood,

  And proper lineal inheritor!

  I swear, had his foretold atrocities

  Touch’d me alone. I had not saved myself

  At such a cost to him; but as a king,—

  A Christian king,—I say, advisedly,

  Who would devote his people to a tyrant

  Worse than Caligula fore-chronicled?

  But even this not without grave mis-giving,

  Lest by some chance mis-reading of the stars,

  Or mis-direction of what rightly read,

  I wrong my son of his prerogative,

  And Poland of her rightful sovereign.

  For, sure and certain prophets as the stars,

  Although they err not, he who reads them may;

  Or rightly reading—seeing there is One

  Who governs them, as, under Him, they us,

  We are not sure if the rough diagram

  They draw in heaven and we interpret here,

  Be sure of operation, if the Will

  Supreme, that sometimes for some special end

  The course of providential nature breaks

  By miracle, may not of these same stars

  Cancel his own first draft, or overrule

  What else fore-written all else overrules.

  As, for example, should the Will Almighty

  Permit the Free-will of particular man

  To break the meshes of else strangling fate—

  Which Free-will, fearful of foretold abuse,

  I have myself from my own son fore-closed

  From ever possible self-extrication;

  A terrible responsibility,

  Not to the conscience to be reconciled

  Unless opposing almost certain evil

  Against so slight contingency of good.

  Well—thus perplex’d, I have resolved at last

  To bring the thing to trial: whereunto

  Here have I summon’d you, my Peers, and you

  Whom I more dearly look to, failing him,

  As witnesses to that which I propose;

  And thus propose the doing it. Clotaldo,

  Who guards my son with old fidelity,

  Shall bring him hither from his tower by night

  Lockt in a sleep so fast as by my art

  I rivet to within a link of death,

  But yet from death so far, that next day’s dawn

  Shall wake him up upon the royal bed,

  Complete in consciousness and faculty,

  When with all princely pomp and retinue

  My loyal Peers with due obeisance

  Shall hail him Segismund, the Prince of Poland.

  Then if with any show of human kindness

  He fling discredit, not upon the stars,

  But upon me, their misinterpreter,

  With all apology mistaken age

  Can make to youth it never meant to harm,

  To my son’s forehead will I shift the crown

  I long have wish’d upon a younger brow;

  And in religious humiliation,

  For what of worn-out age remains to me,

  Entreat my pardon both of Heaven and him

  For tempting destinies beyond my reach.

  But if, as I misdoubt, at his first step

  The hoof of the predicted savage shows;

  Before predicted mischief can be done,

  The self-same sleep that loosed him from the chain

  Shall re-consign him, not to loose again.

  Then shall I, having lost that heir direct,

  Look solely to my sisters’ children twain

  Each of a claim so equal as divides

  The voice of Poland to their several sides,

  But, as I trust, to be entwined ere long

  Into one single wreath so fair and strong

  As shall at once all difference atone,

  And cease the realm’s division with their own.

  Cousins and Princes, Peers and Councillors,

  Such is the purport of this invitation,

  And such is my design. Whose furtherance

  If not as Sovereign, if not as Seer,

  Yet one whom these white locks, if nothing else,

  To patient acquiescence consecrate,

  I now demand and even supplicate.

  ASTOLFO. Such news, and from such lips, may well suspend

  The tongue to loyal answer most attuned;

  But if to me as spokesman of my faction

  Your Highness looks for answer; I reply

  For one and all—Let Segismund, whom now

  We first hear tell of as your living heir,

  Appear, and but in your sufficient eye

  Approve himself worthy to be your son,

  Then we will hail him Poland’s rightful heir.

  What says my cousin?

  ESTRELLA. Ay, with all my heart.

  But if my youth and sex upbraid me not

  That I should dare ask of so wise a king—

  KING. Ask, ask, fair cousin! Nothing, I am sure,

  Not well consider’d; nay, if ‘twere, yet nothing

  But pardonable from such lips as those.

  ESTRELLA. Then, with your pardon, Sir—if Segismund,

  My cousin, whom I shall rejoice to hail

  As Prince of Poland too, as you propose,

  Be to a trial coming upon which

  More, as I think, than life itself depends,

  Why, Sir, with sleep-disorder’d senses brought

  To this uncertain contest with his stars?

  KING. Well ask’d indeed! As wisely be it answer’d!

  Because it is uncertain, see you not?

  For as I think I can discern between

  The sudden flaws of a sleep-startled man,

  And of the savage thing we have to dread;

  If but bewilder’d, dazzled, and uncouth,

  As might the sanest and the civilest

  In circumstance so strange—nay, more than that,

  If moved to any out-break short of blood,

  All shall be well with him; and how much more,

  If ‘mid the magic turmoil of the change,

  He shall so calm a resolution show

  As scarce to reel beneath so great a blow!

  But if with savage passion uncontroll’d

  He lay about him like the brute foretold,

  And must as suddenly be caged again;

  Then what redoubled anguish and despair,

  From that brief flash of blissful liberty

  Remitted—and for ever—to his chain!

  Which so much less, if on the stage of glory

  Enter’d and exited through such a door

  Of sleep as makes a dream of all between.

  ESTRELLA. Oh kindly answer, Sir, to question that

  To charitable courtesy less wise

  Might call for pardon rather! I shall now

  Gladly, what, uninstructed, loyally

  I should have waited.

  ASTOLFO. Your Highness doubts not me,

  Nor how my heart follows my cousin’s lips,

  Whatever way the doubtful balance fall,

  Still loyal to your bidding.

  OMNES. So say all.

  KING. I hoped, and did expect, of all no less—

  And sure no sovereign ever needed more

  From all who owe him love or loyalty.

  For what a strait of time I stand upon,

  When to this issue not alone I bring
r />   My son your Prince, but e’en myself your King:

  And, whichsoever way for him it turn,

  Of less than little honour to myself.

  For if this coming trial justify

  My thus withholding from my son his right,

  Is not the judge himself justified in

  The father’s shame? And if the judge proved wrong,

  My son withholding from his right thus long,

  Shame and remorse to judge and father both:

  Unless remorse and shame together drown’d

  In having what I flung for worthless found.

  But come—already weary with your travel,

  And ill refresh’d by this strange history,

  Until the hours that draw the sun from heaven

  Unite us at the customary board,

  Each to his several chamber: you to rest;

  I to contrive with old Clotaldo best

  The method of a stranger thing than old

  Time has a yet among his records told. [Exeunt.]

  ACT II

  SCENE I—A Throne-room in the Palace. Music within.

  [Enter KING and CLOTALDO, meeting a Lord in waiting]

  KING. You, for a moment beckon’d from your office,

  Tell me thus far how goes it. In due time

  The potion left him?

  LORD. At the very hour

  To which your Highness temper’d it. Yet not

  So wholly but some lingering mist still hung

  About his dawning senses—which to clear,

  We fill’d and handed him a morning drink

  With sleep’s specific antidote suffused;

  And while with princely raiment we invested

  What nature surely modell’d for a Prince—

  All but the sword—as you directed—

  KING. Ay—

  LORD. If not too loudly, yet emphatically

  Still with the title of a Prince address’d him.

  KING. How bore he that?

  LORD. With all the rest, my liege,

  I will not say so like one in a dream

  As one himself misdoubting that he dream’d.

  KING. So far so well, Clotaldo, either way,

  And best of all if tow’rd the worse I dread.

  But yet no violence?

  LORD. At most, impatience;

  Wearied perhaps with importunities

  We yet were bound to offer.

  KING. Oh, Clotaldo!

  Though thus far well, yet would myself had drunk

  The potion he revives from! such suspense

  Crowds all the pulses of life’s residue

  Into the present moment; and, I think,

  Whichever way the trembling scale may turn,

  Will leave the crown of Poland for some one

  To wait no longer than the setting sun!

  CLOTALDO. Courage, my liege! The curtain is undrawn,

  And each must play his part out manfully,

  Leaving the rest to heaven.

  KING. Whose written words

  If I should misinterpret or transgress!

  But as you say—

  (To the Lord, who exit.) You, back to him at once;

  Clotaldo, you, when he is somewhat used

  To the new world of which they call him Prince,

  Where place and face, and all, is strange to him,

  With your known features and familiar garb

  Shall then, as chorus to the scene, accost him,

  And by such earnest of that old and too

  Familiar world, assure him of the new.

  Last in the strange procession, I myself

  Will by one full and last development

  Complete the plot for that catastrophe

  That he must put to all; God grant it be

  The crown of Poland on his brows!—Hark! hark!—

  Was that his voice within!—Now louder—Oh,

  Clotaldo, what! so soon begun to roar!—

  Again! above the music—But betide

  What may, until the moment, we must hide.

  [Exeunt KING and CLOTALDO.]

  SEGISMUND (within). Forbear! I stifle with your perfume! Cease

  Your crazy salutations! peace, I say

  Begone, or let me go, ere I go mad

  With all this babble, mummery, and glare,

  For I am growing dangerous—Air! room! air!—

  [He rushes in. Music ceases.]

  Oh but to save the reeling brain from wreck

  With its bewilder’d senses!

  [He covers his eyes for a while.]

  What! E’en now

  That Babel left behind me, but my eyes

  Pursued by the same glamour, that—unless

  Alike bewitch’d too—the confederate sense

  Vouches for palpable: bright-shining floors

  That ring hard answer back to the stamp’d heel,

  And shoot up airy columns marble-cold,

  That, as they climb, break into golden leaf

  And capital, till they embrace aloft

  In clustering flower and fruitage over walls

  Hung with such purple curtain as the West

  Fringes with such a gold; or over-laid

  With sanguine-glowing semblances of men,

  Each in his all but living action busied,

  Or from the wall they look from, with fix’d eyes

  Pursuing me; and one most strange of all

  That, as I pass’d the crystal on the wall,

  Look’d from it—left it—and as I return,

  Returns, and looks me face to face again—

  Unless some false reflection of my brain,

  The outward semblance of myself—Myself?

  How know that tawdry shadow for myself,

  But that it moves as I move; lifts his hand

  With mine; each motion echoing so close

  The immediate suggestion of the will

  In which myself I recognize—Myself!—

  What, this fantastic Segismund the same

  Who last night, as for all his nights before,

  Lay down to sleep in wolf-skin on the ground

  In a black turret which the wolf howl’d round,

  And woke again upon a golden bed,

  Round which as clouds about a rising sun,

  In scarce less glittering caparison,

  Gather’d gay shapes that, underneath a breeze

  Of music, handed him upon their knees

  The wine of heaven in a cup of gold,

  And still in soft melodious under-song

  Hailing me Prince of Poland!—‘Segismund,’

  They said, ‘Our Prince! The Prince of Poland!’ and

  Again, ‘Oh, welcome, welcome, to his own,

  ‘Our own Prince Segismund—’

  Oh, but a blast—

  One blast of the rough mountain air! one look

  At the grim features—[He goes to the window.]

  What they disvizor’d also! shatter’d chaos

  Cast into stately shape and masonry,

  Between whose channel’d and perspective sides

  Compact with rooted towers, and flourishing

  To heaven with gilded pinnacle and spire,

  Flows the live current ever to and fro

  With open aspect and free step!—Clotaldo!

  Clotaldo!—calling as one scarce dares call

  For him who suddenly might break the spell

  One fears to walk without him—Why, that I,

  With unencumber’d step as any there,

  Go stumbling through my glory—feeling for

  That iron leading-string—ay, for myself—

  For that fast-anchor’d self of yesterday,

  Of yesterday, and all my life before,

  Ere drifted clean from self-identity

  Upon the fluctuation of to-day’s

  Mad whirling circumstance!—And, fool, why not?

  If reason, sense, and self-identity<
br />
  Obliterated from a worn-out brain,

  Art thou not maddest striving to be sane,

  And catching at that Self of yesterday

  That, like a leper’s rags, best flung away!

  Or if not mad, then dreaming—dreaming?—well—

  Dreaming then—Or, if self to self be true,

  Not mock’d by that, but as poor souls have been

  By those who wrong’d them, to give wrong new relish?

  Or have those stars indeed they told me of

  As masters of my wretched life of old,

  Into some happier constellation roll’d,

  And brought my better fortune out on earth

  Clear as themselves in heaven!—Prince Segismund

  They call’d me—and at will I shook them off—

  Will they return again at my command

  Again to call me so?—Within there! You!

  Segismund calls—Prince Segismund—

  [He has seated himself on the throne.]

  [Enter CHAMBERLAIN, with lords in waiting.]

  CHAMBERLAIN. I rejoice

  That unadvised of any but the voice

  Of royal instinct in the blood, your Highness

  Has ta’en the chair that you were born to fill.

  SEGISMUND. The chair?

  CHAMBERLAIN. The royal throne of Poland, Sir,

  Which may your Royal Highness keep as long

  As he that now rules from it shall have ruled

  When heaven has call’d him to itself.

  SEGISMUND. When he?—

  CHAMBERLAIN. Your royal father, King Basilio, Sir.

  SEGISMUND. My royal father—King Basilio.

  You see I answer but as Echo does,

  Not knowing what she listens or repeats.

  This is my throne—this is my palace—Oh,

  But this out of the window?—

  CHAMBERLAIN. Warsaw, Sir,

  Your capital—

  SEGISMUND. And all the moving people?

  CHAMBERLAIN. Your subjects and your vassals like ourselves.

  SEGISMUND. Ay, ay—my subjects—in my capital—

  Warsaw—and I am Prince of it—You see

  It needs much iteration to strike sense

  Into the human echo.

  CHAMBERLAIN. Left awhile

  In the quick brain, the word will quickly to

  Full meaning blow.

  SEGISMUND. You think so?

  CHAMBERLAIN. And meanwhile

  Lest our obsequiousness, which means no worse

  Than customary honour to the Prince

  We most rejoice to welcome, trouble you,

  Should we retire again? or stand apart?

  Or would your Highness have the music play

  Again, which meditation, as they say,

  So often loves to float upon?

  SEGISMUND. The music?

  No—yes—perhaps the trumpet—(Aside) Yet if that

  Brought back the troop!

  A LORD. The trumpet! There again