Plato’s Allegory of the Cave is an ever-present theme, and the major backdrop that sets up Life is a Dream. Segismundo lives in a state relatively similar to that of the prisoners in the cave. Shackled to a wall, Segismundo remains there – unable to experience the “real” world. Despite King Basil allowing Segismundo to come out of the cave, where he then fulfills Basil’s astrological prophecy, Plato’s Allegory sets up an intriguing problem for us as readers: Even if Segismundo has experienced the cave and “reality”, is he really able to differentiate between the two? Might he live his entire existence (if the story continued) never truly knowing if he is awake or dreaming? In some respects it might not matter.
I’m reminded of a recent Black Mirror episode (spoilers ahead!!) where, after some co-workers are cloned into a spaceship virtual-reality video game, they trap their captor in his own personal version, while the co-workers aboard the spaceship continue exploring the “galaxy” of the video game – along with other spaceships controlled by random people or kids playing the video game. Even though the members of the spaceship are aware that they are existing in a video game, the game is so real and vast that it doesn’t matter to them that they’re not in the “real” world, because they can experience and explore in the infinite game. While that is not an exact corollary to what happens in Calderón de la Barca’s work, it does give us insight on how characters can choose to exist in worlds that are not necessarily what they’re used to. Segismundo grew up in the cave, and is used to its confines. Though he has lived fully in the outside world, he may still have an inkling that everything he sees is not as it seems. There could always be a feeling that he is living everything in a wild dream his brain concocted while shackled to the cave walls. For Segismundo, none of these quandaries may matter him. Simply by being outside the cave, life has taken a turn for the better. The dream land, if Segismundo is to buy into that argument, is one that gives him autonomy over his decisions, at least at the end of the play.
