The Spanish Golden Age was a period of flourishing in arts and literature, and in particular of drama, in Spain, coinciding with the political decline and fall of the Habsburgs. This term does not generally imply any great precision about dates, but it begins no earlier than 1492, ending with the death of he last great writer of the period, Pedro Calderon de la Barca, died in 1681.In 2003, the RSC produced a season of Spanish Golden Age plays, including classics such as "The Dog in the Manger", "House of Desires and Pedro", and "The Great Pretender" establishing an innovative working process that laid emphasis on the plays as pieces of theatre, dynamic and alive, and on the principle of respect for the plays' historical contexts. The essays in this book, written by some of the world's foremost scholars of the Spanish Golden Age, explore some of the many issues that arose from this season and the complex nature of translating and staging plays from the Spanish Golden Age on the English-speaking stage.