Comedia

Life Is a Dream is a comedia, a form of Spanish drama perfected at the beginning of the seventeenth century by the great Spanish playwright Lope de Vega and codified in his 1609 treatise El arte nuevo de hacer comedias en este sieglo (The New Art of Playwriting in This Century). Comedia is verse drama in three acts. In the first act, the issues are introduced. In the second, they are developed. In the third, they are resolved. Comedia mixes comic and serious elements and features intrigue, disguise, swordplay, and battles.

Conflict between Characters and Ideas

There are two sorts of conflicts that shape the plot of Life Is a Dream. There are conflicts between characters, such as the conflict between Basilio and Segismundo or Astolfo and Rosaura or Astolfo and Estrella. There are also clashes of ideas, like that between free will and determinism or between self-interest and...