The Phantom Lady is a play by Spanish playwright Pedro Calderón de la Barca. It was written and performed in 1629 and was published for the first time in the Primera parte de comedias de don Pedro Calderón de la Barca. The Phantom Lady is a cloak and sword play which follows the plot of the Invisible Mistress. This plot derives from the myth of Cupid and Psyche, but inverts the role of the protagonists. In the plot and in the Spanish play, it is the man's curiosity which leads him to meet and fall in love with the invisible woman; that is, with a woman who is either hidden, veiled or encountered in the dark. The Invisible Mistress plot is already found in Italian novelle by Masuccio Salernitano and Matteo Bandello. Even though Calderón uses elements from Lope de Vega’s play La viuda valenciana, his main model is an interpolated story in El soldado Píndaro by Gonzalo de Céspedes y Meneses. As is common in cloak and sword plays, it is the woman, in this case Doña Ángela, who propels the action. Her objective is to conquer Don Manuel while avoiding the attention of her two brothers, who watch over her. In order to communicate with Don Manuel, the lady uses an ingenious device, which creates an ambiance of supernatural mystery, thus referring to the title of the play.
List of Characters
- Don Manuel - Don Juan, his friend - Don Luis, brother of Don Juan - Cosme, clownish servant to Don Manuel - Rodrigo, servant to Don Luis - Doña Angela, sister of Don Juan and Don Luis - Doña Beatriz, her cousin - Isabel, maid to Doña Angela - Clara, maid to Doña Beatriz
Plot
Act 1
The play opens on a street in Madrid on which Don Manuel and his servant, Cosme are traveling to celebrate the christening of a prince.
Production
To put on a production of this play, a license can be requested from Samuel French. The cost to obtain the rights for the script is at minimum $75 per production. The cast size is five males and four females. However, there is room for extras actors to play ensemble members. The script was published in Calderon de la Barca: 6 Plays, which is a collection of six of Calderon's most famous plays. This script was translated from Spanish to English by Edwin Honig, who was a poet and translator. This play had been interpreted from many points of view. One of them emphasized the tragic elements in the work. Those who propose this type of approach point to the tragic references in the first scene; to the darkness that surrounds the spaces in this work; to the fact that Doña Ángela constantly complains that her brothers have incarcerated her; and to the rivalry between the two brothers. Some scholars have studied the magical and the so-called superstitious elements of the play; others have turned to the economic and political subtexts, claiming that gold turned into coal points to the economic policies of the Count-Duke of Olivares. Finally, many have studied the feminist or proto-feminist aspects of the work.
Adaptations
It was adapted into a 1945 Argentinian film The Phantom Lady. However, this film is a very loose adaptation of the original play. This is a 1940's noir film that takes place in New York City. The "Phantom Lady" of this film is a woman who is potentially the primary witness for the murder trial of a man named Scott Henderson, who was falsely accused of murdering his wife. However, Henderson is unable to remember any details about the woman, other than a large, flashy hat that she was wearing on the evening that they had spent together. In addition to that, no one who saw Henderson and the woman together is willing to admit to the police that they had seen the two together. Eventually, Henderson and his assistant, Carol, decide to begin their own investigation. They tour all throughout New York City to ultimately reveal that the murderer was Henderson's close friend, Marlowe.
