Pedro Calderón de la Barca (17 January 1600 – 25 May 1681), a Spanish dramatist, poet, writer, and knight of the Order of Santiago, is celebrated as one of the most distinguished Baroque writers of the Spanish Golden Age, particularly renowned for his plays.

Born in Madrid, where he spent most of his life, Calderón de la Barca's journey encompassed roles as a soldier and a Roman Catholic priest. Emerging in an era when the Spanish Golden Age theatre was being sculptured by Lope de Vega, Calderón de la Barca further refined this tradition, his oeuvre regarded as the zenith of Spanish Baroque theatre. As such, he is esteemed among Spain's premier dramatists and as one of the finest playwrights in world literature.

Calderón de la Barca was a courtier poet and soldier before being ordained as a priest in 1651. His theatrical works, building upon those of Lope de Vega, introduced significant modifications: the elimination of unnecessary scenes, reduction of secondary scenes, subordination of characters to a central one, emphasis on monarchical ideas and the theme of honor. His work is characterized by Baroque existential angst, theological queries, and the achievement of maximum lyricism in his autos sacramentales, which required elaborate stage machinery. Calderón’s language, marking the culmination of culteranismo, is noted for its expressive richness and intellectual conceptualism, with La vida es sueño (1635) being a prime example.

His body of work is thematically diverse, including religious comedies (La devoción de la cruz), historical-legendary (El sitio de Breda), intrigue (Casa con dos puertas, mala es de guardar), honor (El médico de su honra), philosophical (El gran teatro del mundo), mythological (Eco y Narciso), and auto-sacramentales (A Dios por razón de estado).