Drama Classics: The World's Great Plays at a Great Little Price A masterpiece of the Spanish Golden Age. It is foretold that Prince Sigismund will become a tyrant. Alarmed, his father, the king, imprisons him. When he is released for a day as an experiment he proves the omens only too right, and, as a result, is incarcerated once more. Sigismund persuades himself that all that has passed is a dream and emerges to rule wisely and justly. Pedro Calderon's play Life is a Dream was first published in 1635. This English translation by John Clifford was first performed at the Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, in 1998. It is published in the Nick Hern Books Drama Classics series.