The Great Prince of Fez

Pedro Calderón de la Barca

Comedia de Santos wr. 1668

Muley Mahomet, Prince of Fez, is beset by religious doubts because of a reference in the Koran; his teacher Cide Hamet fails to clarify it for him. While the Prince sleeps, an Evil Genie and a Good Genie vie for domination over him. During the next day's battle with the King of Morocco, the prince falls from his horse and is stunned, but his wife Zara takes command and defeats the Moroccans. The unconscious Prince is once more fought over by the two genies. On his recovery, the Prince undertakes a pilgrimage to Mecca but is captured and taken to Malta by the Christian leader Don Baltasar. In the latter's library the Prince finds an account of the life of St. Ignatius of Loyola.

Ransomed through the efforts of Zara, the Prince sails for Mecca. However, when a storm threatens the ship, it is the Virgin Mary he invokes. She appears and advises him to return to Malta, where he is baptised before setting out on a pilgrimage to Rome. When Zara learns of his conversion, she is enraged, but she is comforted by the King of Morocco, who now hopes to marry her. Cide Hamet, humiliated, makes an unsuccessful attempt to poison the Prince with a deadly bouquet. The play ends with the apotheosis of the saintly Prince and the triumph of the Good Genie.