About the work
Auto sacramental (a Spanish allegorical religious play) by Pedro Calderón de la Barca, probably written between 1633 and 1636. A performance during the Corpus Christi festivities in Valencia in 1641 is documented; the text was first printed in 1655.
Plot
The Creator assigns humans their roles on the stage of the world – king, rich man, poor man, farmer, beauty, wise man and others – which they must play out over the course of their lives. At the end of the performance, every character sheds their earthly role and appears, just as they arrived, before God's judgment, where their conduct in life is weighed.
Cultural significance
The play is considered Calderón's most famous auto sacramental and the fullest realization of the Baroque theatrum mundi idea, which understands the world itself as a stage. It was performed regularly at the Einsiedeln World Theatre from 1924 to 1992 and continues to be restaged in new adaptations.