Pedro Calderón de la Barca

Pedro Calderón de la Barca (17 January 160025 May 1681) (, ; ; full name: ''Pedro Calderón de la Barca y Barreda González de Henao Ruiz de Blasco y Riaño'') was a Spanish dramatist, poet, and writer. He is known as one of the most distinguished poets and writers of the Spanish Golden Age, especially for the many verse dramas he wrote for the theatre.

Calderón de la Barca was born into the minor Spanish nobility in Madrid, where he lived for most of his life. He served as soldier and a knight of the military and religious Order of Santiago, but later became a Roman Catholic priest. Born while the Spanish Golden Age theatre was being defined by Lope de Vega, he developed it further by introducing pioneering elements of what are now called metafiction and surrealism. His poetry and plays have since wielded an enormous global influence upon Romanticism, symbolism, literary modernism, expressionism, science fiction, and even postmodernism. Calderón is widely regarded as the perfecter of Spanish Baroque theatre and is regarded as Spain's greatest dramatist, national poet, and as one of the greatest poets and playwrights in world literature.}} Provided by Wikipedia