Life is a Dream | Blog Post #3

Life is a Dream | Act Two

Lines 744-746:
SEGISMUND: (Still in a dream.) Throughout the expanse of this
world's theatre
I'll show my peerless valour, let my vengeance
Be wreaked, and the Prince Segismund be seen
To triumph--over his father...but, alas!
(Awakening.)
Where am I?

Lines 749-766:
SEGISMUND: Can this be I? Am I the same who, chained
And long imprisoned, rose to such a state?
Are you not still my sepulchre and grave,
You dismal tower? God! What things I have dreamed!
CLOTALDO: (Aside.) Now I must go to him to disenchant him.
(Aloud.)
Awake already?
SEGISMUND: Yes: it was high time
CLOTALDO: What? Do you have to spend all day asleep?
Since I was following the eagle's flight
With tardy discourse, have you still lain here without awaking?
SEGISMUND: No. Nor even now.
Am I awake. It seems I've always slept,
Since, if I've dreamed what I've just seen and heard
Palpably and for certain, then I am dreaming
What I see now--nor is it strange I'm tired,
Since what I, sleeping, see, tells me that I
Was dreaming when I thought I was awake.
CLOTALDO: Tell me your dream.
SEGISMUND: That's if it was a dream!
No, I'll not tell you what I dreamed; but what
I lived and saw, Clotaldo, I will tell you.
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            The setting of any play is typically an element that gets vastly overlooked because when the action of a play begins, the audience focuses in on the characters themselves, which leaves the setting to fade into the background and seemingly become insignificant in the audience's eyes. However, the setting can have a profound impact on the way that an audience receives a play, regardless of whether or not they notice it.  

            In de la Barca's Life is a Dream, a king, Basil, banishes his son, Segismund, to forever live in an abandoned tower so that the prophecy of his son becoming a tyrant once he holds the king's position will be averted; this banishment also allows the king to solve the problem without killing his only son. Following the King's decision to test the prophecy and free Segismund for a day to see how he would act as king, the King's worst fears and the prophecy are confirmed, so he banishes Segismund yet again and proceeds to have him believe that it was all "just a dream". 

            The lines I pulled from the play highlight the scene that occurs in the abandoned tower that Segismund calls home, following his re-banishment as he is awaking from a deep opium-induced sleep. Once awakened, Segismund believes he is alone and ultimately begins to have a conversation with the tower itself, crying out at it in despair and anger over the freedom that he has just "dreamed" and lost all at once, as if it is the tower's fault. This tower, apart from his guardian Clotaldo, is all that Segismund has ever really known and we see from the beginning of this passage that he treats it as an entity in itself, and as the "thing" that is holding him there, for he does not know the truth that his father is the one who put him there. Because of where these words are being spoken, I believe it leads us to interpret them in a way that makes us feel apathy toward Segismund, even though at this point we have already seen that he was indeed a tyrant king, because the causes of his misfortunes remain entirely unbeknownst to him and he is now being led to believe he is half-crazy because what was actually a real experience for him, he is now being told was "just a dream". Had Segismund simply been locked away in a comfortable room in the palace and this interaction had taken place there, it is likely that we, as the audience, would not have been as drawn to feel apathy for him because his misfortunes would not have been so apparent.

            In this scene, Clotaldo also interacts with the tower in the sense that he uses its many crooks and corners to hide out and speak with Basil about how to "disenchant" Segismund to make him believe his temporary freedom was "just a dream". Clotaldo uses the tower as an instrument and because of this, I feel that the setting of the tower leads us to interpret his words in a way that conveys betrayal and deceit because Clotaldo is the only human contact with which Segismund has ever had, except for in his "dream", and Clotaldo is simply going to fool Segismund and let him remain swimming in his confused thoughts.

            This dark, abandoned, dungeon-like, tortuous tower is a crater of secrets -- the secret that Segismund is the heir to a throne of which he is being denied, the secret that his father let a prophecy decide his son's grim future for him and never fought it, the secret that his father is giving his son's place in royalty to his niece and nephew, and the secret that Segismund's "dream" was not a dream at all. The point of this play appears to be that we all have expectations and aspirations of what our lives should be, yet the reality remains that these expectations and aspirations rarely come to fruition in the same way, form, and fashion that we would like them to. The stark contrast of the two settings within the play, the royal palace and the derelict tower, represents this chasm between what we hope and wish for in our lives and what often actually takes place.