2 - From metaphor to symbol

Summary

In the centenary year of 1881 the young Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo brought his course of lectures on Calderón to a close by enumerating the defects of his art. They were: ‘Verbosity, the empty pomp of his diction, attention paid more to intrigues and to the movement on the stage than to the painstaking and careful dissection and analysis of a character.’ Since then, the third centenary of Calderón's death has been celebrated, and a very different picture emerged from most of the commemorative addresses. It has become more usual, in fact, to look for his artistic merits precisely in his ‘language’, in the ‘intrigues’ of his plots, and in the ‘movement on stage’. One aspect of his style and technique which is fundamental for the study of his art forms the subject of this chapter.

A characteristic example of my preoccupation is the relatively early play, La cisma de Ingalaterra, whose metaphors and symbols will be dealt with in general terms here, while the fuller study of its theme and its dramatic significance will be taken up again in a later chapter. The play was performed in the salón de teatro, the small private theatre in the Madrid palace before the Coliseo was constructed. At the beginning of this play, King Henry VIII receives two letters, one from the Pope and one from Luther; he mistakenly throws the Pope's letter at his feet and puts Luther's on his head. Later, Anne Boleyn enters; so arrogant is she that she dislikes kneeling even before the king, but as she approaches him, she stumbles and falls.