I find myself disappointed by the final act of Life is a Dream, though not quite in the way I expected I might be. After reading through the first two acts and comparing it to other, similar classic plays in which fate is played up as an unstoppable obstacle the characters desperately try to avoid, such as Oedipus Rex or the latter portion of Macbeth, I thought this story would follow suit and I prepared myself for the dreariness of another cynical, pessimistic denoument. I imagined Segismund would eventually find his way out of his imprisonment again and kill his father (and perhaps Clotaldo, too). To my surprise, I saw that this fate was averted. The characters managed to overcome their destinies and reach a happy ending. My dissatisfaction lies with the form that said happy ending takes.
For one, I do not find the play’s handling of Segismund’s moral character in the final act very plausible. Throughout the second act, while I did not enjoy any of his vengeful outbursts or his egoistic worldview, I could at least understand why he would feel the way he did, having spent his entire life devoid of the autonomy which most people enjoy unerringly. I can understand why he would lash out at his father for locking him up and at his jailor for tormenting him, and I can imagine that his rage would be untempered and wild, overflowing at the slightest provocation, either because of its massive scope or simply because he lacks experience in the real world. All of it is the product of the small, confining world he had been given up to that point. After all, he had until then experienced a world consisting almost entirely of himself, so why would he not be selfish?
What I cannot understand is how Segismund seems to become just once the briefly-held ruse that his time in the royal court was all a dream came undone and he found himself lost in confusion and doubting whether anything he experienced was real at all. Would he not, perhaps, become even more vengeful and ireful at being denied his humanity yet again? Or perhaps, instead, might he succumb to despair or insanity, losing his will to live were he to be tortured with more dreams of freedom? Either of those seems far more plausible than somehow coming to the conclusion that the possibility of the world before him being nothing but a fantasy should spur him to act justly toward those within it. In my experience, usually the opposite is true, and people often behave much more selfishly if they believe their actions will have no consequences on the real world. I simply do not understand why he changes the way he does.
I also take issue with the resolution of Rosaura’s subplot. Earlier, we saw a strong woman trying to take vengeance upon a man who ran off to abscond with Polish nobility, leaving her alone. I enjoyed seeing Rosaura approach Segismund as she readied for battle, determined to take matters into her own hands. Then, we do not see her again. She simply vanishes from the text, and her plot is resolved by Segismund simply telling Astolf to marry her, which Astolf only agrees to after learning that Rosaura is Clotaldo’s child. Would she not feel insulted by this? Would it not hurt her pride to have Astolf reluctantly accept her, and only then because of her birth rather than her character, after he abandoned and shamed her? We are not even permitted to see Rosaura’s reaction to the development. I feel immensely dissatisfied, since I enjoyed Rosaura as a character and I would have liked to see her character reach closure somehow.
Overall, I feel like the ending of the play, to an extent, tramples over the interesting questions and developments the rest of the plot created. Exploring the effects that Segismund’s changes in environment and the way that his captors tried to manipulate him seemed very interesting, but I found the result of their machinations hard to believe. I was intrigued by Rosaura as she led her assault against Astolf, and even amused as she was able to make him fall out of favor with Stella, but then found her shunted to the side at the last second and receiving an unsatisfying, possibly even demeaning ending. I simply wish that the final act of the play had gone in another direction.
I agree that Segismund and Rosaura had fairly weak endings. I think the reason for Segismund’s reversal was simply that Calderon wanted to show that people do indeed have free will. By becoming a kind king, Segismund seems to suggest that the future is not certain, whether it means opposing what the stars seem to show us or by ignoring our harmful tendencies to become better people. Calderon seems to think that it is never to late to change for the better (although his demonstration in favor of this argument does seem rather weak).
I also found Rosaura’s story line quite anticlimactic. The play was very close to having a strong feminist message, as it showed a 17th century woman fighting for herself, but then this message faded towards the end by not having her do anything. If anything, it seems like Astolf is the one rewarded; the woman he previously had romantic feelings for has suddenly turned out to be high-born, so he no longer needs to decide between love and status. But really the most disappointing part of this is that Rosaura just accepts this marriage as a good resolution, and agrees to marry him. It would be far more entertaining and probably more fitting to Rosaura’s character if she had just killed Astolf anyway (or at least denied his request) after he agreed to marry her.
Still, for all we know, this somewhat ridiculous ending could be the result of a dream. Perhaps the entire 3rd act is all in Segismund’s head as he lies in his prison. After spending his whole life there with no one but Clotaldo around, he is likely very lonely, and so he has manufactured an alternative future where he escapes from prison and gains a father, a wife, and friends. In this context of his mind’s loneliness, all of the happy engagements at the end make much more sense.
Or perhaps we are in your dream, and something inside your subconscious wanted to create an ending to the play that would disappoint you. We may never know.
I wholeheartedly agree with your thoughts on Segismund’s change in morality. I was confused as to why he would act better when he was convinced that everything around him was a dream rather than real. In a dream, your actions have no consequences, since the people around you don’t really exist and everything will disappear when you wake up. I would think that people would be more likely to act violently in this case. However, Segismund does the opposite. Perhaps once he behaved wickedly the first time he is freed he realized that it brought him no satisfaction and tried to behave better the second time.
I also agree that the conclusion to Rosaura’s story was not very satisfying. However, in the context of the story, and the times, I think it makes slightly more sense. Rosaura’s chief concern is that her honor has been soiled, and it will affect her social status and future prospects to have been involved with someone she is not married to. Astolf agreeing to marry her resolves this conflict.