Federico García Lorca was born on 5 June 1898in Fuente Vaqueros, near Granada, the eldest son of four children.An illness when he was two months old prevented him attendingschool until he was four. He was educated at home by his mother,Doña Vicente Lorca Romero. His father, Don Federico GarcíaRodriguez, was a prosperous farmer.
In 1909 his family moved to Granada and he attended the Collegeof the Sacred Heart. Five years later he began his studies atthe University of Granada, in the Faculties of Arts and Law, butwithout enthusiasm.
In 1915 he began to study piano and guitar - giving some privaterecitals at the Conservatory - and started to attend literarygatherings at the Cafe Alameda in Granada. He also formed a friendshipwith Fernando de los Ríos, Professor of Political Law.
Two years later he travelled to different cities and regionsof Andalusia and Castille on educational visits organised by MartinDominguez Berrueta, Professor of Art Theory. A meeting with Manuelde Falla further stimulated his love of music.
Lorca published his first book - Impressions & Landscapes- in 1918; it was based on his trips the year before.
The following year he left Granada for Madrid to begin a ten-yearstay at the Residence for Students. Among his close friends wereLuis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí, both champions ofthe avante-garde.
During this time - whilst striving to conceal his homosexuality- he wrote his first play, The Butterfly's Evil Spell,which was performed at Madrid's Teatro Eslava in 1920. The followingyear Lorca's first volume of poetry, Book of Poems, waspublished.
1927 saw the publication of Songs, his second volumeof poetry; in the same year his play Mariana Pineda opened toconsiderable claim in Barcelona.
Lorca's best-known volume of poetry, Gypsy Ballads,was published in 1928 and the following year marked the startof a nine-month visit to the United States where he enrolled asa student of English language at Columbia University. He returnedto Spain in 1930 having also visited Cuba. His play The Shoemaker'sProdigious Wife opened on 24th December at the Teatro Beatrizin Madrid.
He completed work on his plays The Public and WhenFive Years Pass in 1931 and, under the auspices of the newRepublican government, he became the director of the touring theatrecompany, La Barraca.
His play Blood Wedding premiered in Madrid in 1933 withLorca himself directing. It proved a huge success and he wenton that year to direct triumphant productions of Mariana Pineda,Blood Wedding and The Shoemaker's Prodigious Wife inArgentina.
There was great public and critical acclaim for the Madridpremiere of his next play Yerma in 1934. And the year after,there was an equally enthusiastic reception on the opening nightof Doña Rosita the Spinster at the Teatro PrincipalPalace in Barcelona.
In 1936 - with The House of Bernarda Alba completedand the Spanish Civil War beginning - Lorca left Madrid, arrivingin Granada just as it was about to fall to a military insurrectionled by Franco. He hid in the house of the poet Luis Rosales butwas eventually arrested and detained. In the early hours of the19th August, he was driven away and shot outside the village ofViznar by members of the Assault Guard and the paramilitary BlackSquad. His body was never found.
Federico García Lorca was one of the greatestEuropean dramatists of the twentieth century and his tragic andviolent death at the hands of right-wing militia-men in 1936,at the very beginning of the Spanish Civil War, was one of theheaviest blows to European literature.
Lorca's achievement was profound in that his work appealedboth to the intelligensia with whom he mixed, and to the ordinarypeople of Spain and the Spanish-speaking world.
Lorca's friendship with the Catalan painter Salvador Dalíis well known and well documented. In both Lorca's work and Dalí'swe can see the rich vein of Dadaist and surrealist imagery, whichdelights in unusual and dreamlike comparisons and metaphors.
The Cry
The arc of a cry
goes from hillside
to hillside
from the olives
will be a black rainbow
through the blue night
Ay!
Like the bow of a viola
the shout has set vibrating
long strings of wind.
Ay!
(The folk of the caves
light their lanterns.)
Ay!
from Poema del Cante Jondo.
Both the "black rainbow" and the comparison withthe viola bow are typically surreal images from Lorca's poetry.
Lorca's early fame was really achieved by his poetry, firstlythrough his own dramatic and memorable readings to small groupsof friends in Madrid. Lorca published almost reluctantly, buthis early books, Poema del Cante Jondo and RomanceroGitano (Poem of Deep Song ie flamenco, & GypsyBallads, respectively) made him famous throughout the Spanishworld, and his songs joined the traditional songs of the language,by which they were inspired, and they are still performed todayin the flamenco tradition which Lorca himself admired so much.
Lorca himself came to resent being regarded just as a "gypsypoet" but plays like Blood Wedding include much that is alsoexplored in those relatively early gypsy poems. For example, thegypsy Amargo in the poems which feature him seems to be associatedwith the kind of hereditary violence we meet in Blood Wedding;moreover, on his way to Granada he meets death who is personified,in this case as a chatty horseman, and whose intentions seem assinister as those of the old Beggarwoman in the later play.
The lament of Amargo's mother, Canción de la Madredel Amargo, prefigures too the final scene:
The Song of the Mother of Amargo
They carry him in my sheet
my laurels and my palm.
On the twenty-seventh of August
with a little knife of gold.
The cross. And we go walking!
He was dark and bitter.
Neighbours, give me a bottle
of brass with lemonade.
The cross. Don't let anyone weep!
Amargo is in the moon.
The imagery too of Blood Wedding is the imagery whichLorca had made his own in the earlier poems. It is this imagerywhich helps the poetry of the play to become so memorable anddramatic.
Lorca seems to have been interested in the theatre as a child- there are early stories of his purchase when very young of apuppet theatre for which he composed his own plays - and his interestremained always with him.
The theatre in Spain at the time when Lorca was writing wasalmost moribund. As Reed Anderson says in his very useful shortbook Federic García Lorca, "[in the 1920s] Spanishtheatre as a commercial enterprise was flourishing, and yet therewas constant public discussion of crisis, decadence and stagnation."
It was Lorca's desire to write poetic drama which led him toattempt to revolutionize the theatre of his day. "The theatrethat has always endured is theatre written by poets," saidLorca in 1935. Through his State-sponsored theatre group La BarracaLorca was able to put into practice the dramatic theories he haddeveloped over the years.
Lorca made the following comments after a visit to the villageof Toboso in La Mancha where La Barraca presented a play by Calderónde la Barca:
'The characters in the play were given metal wigs, silver wigsand others of different materials; green beards; gentlemen dressedin costumes with huge shoulder pads. Totally unrealistic by common-sensestandards. And in spite of it all - and what a reassurance itwas - everything was understood right down to the smallest detailsby that audience that was being introduced that way for the firsttime to Calderón. Not one of them found anything that conflictedwith his/ her own sense of reality. And it was because we, withour green beards, with our copper hair, with our oversized shoulderpads, we were telling the truth. And the people of the countrysidehave their hearing and their souls perfectly fashioned to receive,store and ripen the truth that we gave them.'
Although Lorca's own plays were clearly visualized for the'traditional' proscenium arch theatre (and the productions withwhich he was associated, notably those promoted by Margarita Xirgu,reflected this in their staging), the scenery and sets made littleor no attempt at realism - in the early productions they weredesigned by Dalí and his followers, and later sets continuedthis largely unrealistic and decorative form of design.
We can see a similarity then between Lorca as director whodefended outlandish costumes on the grounds that they enhancedthe truthfulness of the play, and Lorca the playwright who introducedpoetic and symbolic scenes into otherwise quite realistic storiesto convey truth in his own drama. The use of poetry and symbolismin Blood Wedding, for example, intensifies and strengthensthe overall realism of the play: Lorca is always interested inmaking his characters universal as well as individual. There isevidence for this intention in the lack of proper names for mostof the cats in Blood Wedding, for example.
Reed Anderson describes the first performance of Blood Wedding:
The premiere of Blood Wedding on 7 March 1933 causeda sensation among those who saw the performance. The first actriveted the audience's attention, but the scene in act two withthe nuptial celebration, the festive songs and dances and thegrowing dramatic tension, provoked an ovation that interruptedthe drama and brought a surprised Lorca out for a bow. In facthe was also called out to acknowledge the applause that followedeach of the play's three acts.
The critics immediately recognised Blood Wedding asa work of innovation for its adventuresome use of an unusuallybroad range of the theatre resources. Also impressive was itsconsistent high seriousness, and its almost classical delineationof the tragic conflict. What people were least prepared for wasthe mixture of realism and poetic symbolism. Lorca had establishedthe tragic potential of the action during the first two acts inan identifiable social context where social dissonances and contradictionswere driving the action towards a tragic crisis.
The problem of mixing prose and poetry throughout the playhad been an over-riding concern of Lorca's in rehearsals, andhe tirelessly worked with the cast to maintain a single principle:to make the transitions from prose to poetry as natural; as possibleby avoiding the declamatory style of acting that was the dominanttechnique on the stage at the time.
When asked what he would call the most gratifying part of thedrama, Lorca said, "The one where the Moon and Death interveneas elements and symbols of fate. The realism that predominatesthe tragedy up to that point is broken and disappears to giveway to poetic fantasy where I naturally feel as confortable asa fish in water."
Blood Wedding: Act One Scene One
The three scenes of the first act occur in distinct locations,and each one sets in motion the conflicting forces that suggestthe play's tragic potential. The first scene between the Motherand the Bridegroom, her son, reveals her complex emotions concerningthe proposed marriage, in contrast with her son's lightheartedoptimism.
Reed Anderson (in Federico García Lorca, Macmillan).
Paisaje
El campo
de olivos
se abre y se cierra
como un abanico.
Sobre el olivar
hay un cielo hundido
y una lluvia oscura
de luceros fríos.
Tiembla junco y penumbra
a la orilla del río.
Se riza el aire gris.
Los olivos
están cargados
de gritos.
Una bandada
de pájaros cautivos,
que mueven sus larguísimas
colas en lo sombrío.
Landscape
The field
of olive trees
opens and shuts
like a fan.
Above the olive grove
sunk sky
dark rain
of cold stars.
The reeds and darkness tremble
along the river bank.
The grey air ripples.
The olives
are charged
with screams.
A flock
of captive birds
which move their great
tails in shade.
Practical drama work: Matching Emotions with Actions.
We need to learn how actions change as a result of apprentlyhidden, or submerged, emotions.
Find a partner and together fold a large piece of materialneatly to put it away tidily.
First do this work as naturally as you can. Then repeat thework in the following circumstances:
1. A has to break bad news to B.
2. B has fallen in love with A, who is seeing B's friend C.
3. You, A & B, have just had a terrible row.
4. A close friend of you both has just rung to say he/she is dyingof a terminal illness.
5. A and partner are expecting a baby, but aren't quite preparedto tell anyone yet.
Try to see, and note, how your actions are modified by yourimagined emotions.
Now, let us use this extract from Chekhov's Uncle Vanyato demonstrate the work which actors and director can do to exploreemotion through action.
Enter ASTROV with a map.
ASTROV Good afternoon.
He shakes hands with her.
You wanted to see what I've been painting?
YELENA You promised yesterday you'd show me your work Can youspare the time?
ASTROV Of course.
He spreads the map out on the card-table and fixes it withdrawing pins.
Where were you born?
YELENA (Helps him.) St Petersburg.
ASTROV And where did you study?
YELENA At the Conservatoire.
ASTROV You may not find this very interesting.
YELENA Why not? I don't know the country, it's true, but I'veread a lot.
ASTROV I've got my own work-table in the house here. In Vanya'sroom. When I get completely exhausted, and I can't think properlyany more, I drop everything and come running over here to distractmyself with this thing for an hour or two Vanya and Sonya clickaway on the abacus, and I sit beside them at my table, busy withmy colouring, and it's warm and peaceful, and the cricket chirps.I don't allow myself this pleasure very often, though - once amonth (Indicates the map.) Now, look at this. It representsthis part of the country as it was fifty years ago. The lightand dark green colouring indicates forest; half of the entiresurface-area is forest. Where the green is hatched with red therewere elk and wild goats I've indicated the fauna as well as theflora. On this lake there were swans and geese and ducks, andwhat the old people call a power of birds of every sort - theplace was swarming with them. Apart from the villages, look, youcan see a scattering of various settlements and smallholdings,little monasteries, watermills Cattle and horses were abundant.They're marked in blue. This district, for example, was thickwith blue; there were complete herds, and two or three horsesper farm. (Pause.) Now let's look down here. As it wastwenty-five years ago. By this time only a third of the surface-areais under forest. The goats have gone, but there are still elk.The green and blue are paler now. And so on, and so on. Let usmove on to the third section - the district as it is today. There'sgreen here and there, but it's not solid, it's only in patches;the elk, the swans, and the capercaillies have all vanished Ofthe former settlements, smallholdings, monasteries, and mills- not a trace. Overall it's the picture of a gradual but incontrovertibledecline, which by the look of it will be complete in another tenor fifteen years. You'll tell me that civilizing factors are atwork here, that the old life must naturally give way to the new.And, yes, I see that if these ruined forests had been replacedby roads and railways, if there were factories and schools here,then the peasants would be healthier and wealthier and wiser -but nothing of the kind! The district still has the same swampsand mosquitoes, the same lack of roads, the same poverty and typhusand diphtheria and fires What we are faced with here is a declineresulting from the unequal struggle for existence, a decline broughtabout by stagnation, by ignorance, by a total lack of awareness,by frozen, sick, and hungry men who, to preserve the last flickersof life, to save their children, instinctively, blindly, graspat anything they can use to relieve their hunger and warm themselves,and who destroy it all without thought for the morrow Almost everythinghas been destroyed now; and nothing yet has been created in itsplace. (Coldly.) I see from your face that you're not interested.
YELENA I understand so little about it.
ASTROV There's nothing to understand - you're simply not interested.
YELENA I was thinking about something else, to tell you the truth.Forgive me.
(from Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov, translated by MichaelFrayn.)
Play out this scene in a number of different ways:
1. Astrov and Yelena are madly in love with one another but havenever had to say so.
2. Yelena loves Astrov madly but he seems oblivious to her charms.
3. Astrov finds Yelena boring but wants to use her as an intermediaryin order to meet Sonya, her friend, with whom he is infatuated.
4. Yelena finds Astrov boring but wants to introduce him to Sonyawho is infatuated with him.
5. Yelena lusts after Astrov but he is homosexual.
6. Everyone has told Astrov that Yelena loves him - except Yelenaherself!
7. Yelena's husband is having an affair with Astrov's wife.
8. Astrov and Yelena were engaged to be married but are now happilymarried to others.
9. Yelena wants to ask Astrov to lend her some money but she'sbored stiff by his maps!
How does each of these statements affect the way the pieceis performed? How are the actions different? Work in pairs onone each of these scenarios, and present yours to the group.
Which is most convincing? Why?
Which is the "true" situation?
Devising actions to accompany text requires an understandingof what is really going on. In Blood Wedding, the Mother'sopening lines, for example, are, on the face of it pretty meaningless;what she wants is simply to hold her son in conversation longenough for him to bring up the question of his marriage. Or atleast, this could be one interpretation.
Finding "actions" to accompany the text then is animportant start to the process of converting script to performance.Some directors call this "actioning the text".
Ask yourself: what is the playwright's aim in this scene?
Ask yourself: what would my aim as a director be in presentingthis scene for performance?
Start writing your letters to Lorca. While Stanislavsky workedon Chekhov's plays, notably Three Sisters and The CherryOrchard, he constantly wrote to Chekhov, then living in theCrimea, to ask for advice and elucidation regarding the text.(In his replies, Chekhov was often frustrated by the director'sinability to see things as subtly as he himself did!)
If you were directing this scene, what observations would youmake to its author, Lorca, if you were able. What issues doesit raise which engage your interest? How and where would you congratulateLorca for specific achievements? What problems does this openingscene raise?
Blood Wedding: Act One Scene Two
The second scene takes place in Leonardo's house, where hiswife and her mother are singing a lullaby to a sleeping infant.Leonardo appears, and the news of the Bride's impending marriageprovokes a sullen and angry mood in him. He responds with hostilityto his Mother-in-law's questions about his long, unexplained absencesfrom home, and finally, he storms out of the room, waking thebaby as he goes. The scene begins and ends with a lullaby, butone whose imagery of frustration, apprehension and obstructionis as portentous as Leonardo's intense anger.
Reed Anderson (in Federico García Lorca, Macmillan).
de
Cancion de jinete (1860)
En la luna negra
de los bandoleros,
cantan las espuelas.
Caballito negro.
¿Dónde llevas tu jinete muerto?
Las duras espuelas
del bandido inmovíl
que perdío las riendas.
Caballito frío.
¡Qué perfume de flor de cuchillo!
En la luna negra
sangraba el costado
de Sierra Morena.
Caballito negro.
¿Dónde llevas tu jinete muerto?
from
Song of the Rider (1860)
In the black moon
of the highwaymen,
the spurs sing.
Little black horse,
where are you taking your dead rider?
The hard spurs
of the motionless bandit,
his reins lost.
Little cold horse,
what a scent of knife-flowers!
In the black moon
the flanks of the Sierra Morena
were bleeding.
Little black horse,
where are you taking your dead rider?
Hot-seating is a good exercise to check the knowledge of whatthe Russian director Stanislavsky called the 'given circumstances'.(It is not a good exercise if the actors simply use their imaginationsto invent details!)
Look at the dialogue between Leonardo and his Wife on pages41 - 43 (from LEONARDO: The Child? to WIFE: Try not to wake him).Use hot-seating to explore the given circumstances within thetext. (You need to be able to refer to the whole play with confidence.)Identify the objectives (the hidden motives) for both characters.Discuss these within the group.
Work in pairs to present this dialogue to the rest of the group.Have a clear idea before you start of the director's aims andof the given circumstances external to the text which you wantto imply in your extract.
If you were to look at one character and follow his or herprogress though the play with this detail, you would be well onthe way to creating a role. You will find that some key scenesare more important than others, in dramatizing key issues in yourcharacter's psychology.
Blood Wedding: Act One Scene Three
The final scene of act one takes place at the distant and isolatedcave-house of the Bride. The formal negotiations of the weddingagreement are held between the Bridegroom's Mother and the Fatherof the Bride. The personal qualities that the Father praises inhis daughter are actually those of a household servant and a bearerof offspring. The Bride then enters, solemn and quiet, and standswith her hands fallen 'in a modest pose' and with her head bowed.She responds laconically and obediently to the Mother's sterninterrogation. The Bride is submissive and dutiful in the presenceof the Mother, her Father and the Bridegroom, but the final segmentof the scene includes only the Bride and her Maidservant, andit reveals in the Bride a repressed strength of body and willthat profoundly contradicts her behaviour only moments before.She bites her own hand in anger and frustration, and physicallystruggles with the servant who picks up one of the wedding giftsout of innocent curiosity. Finding herself the target of the girl'shostility, the servant elicits from her the confession that sheis visited at night by Leonardo, and Lorca closes the act withthe sound of the lover's horse approaching in the distance.
Reed Anderson (in Federico García Lorca, Macmillan).
Practical work: Tableaux.
Exploring the imagery in this section is a profitable way ofbeginning a discussion about setting and costume.
We can compare the language of film and video in developingthe images here.
Blood Wedding: Act Two Scene Two
The rest of the act takes place outside the Bride's house duringthe wedding celebration. The opening scene has released the eroticcurrent that will flow steadily beneath the surface of the entireact, finally inundating the stage at the end and sweeping allthe characters towards the play's catastrophic denouement in thethird act. Lorca calls for the wedding guests to fill the stagewith traditional singing and dancing as the community innocentlyand gracefully honours the new husband and wife. The dialogueamong the principal characters is punctuated by indications ofthe Bride's tense anxiety and the Mother's growing apprehensionthat the union is doomed to disaster. The festival serves as anironic background to what is now becoming the most compellingmovement of the dramatic plot, that is, towards an action thatwill in some way resolve the lovers' desperate situation. Throughoutthe act, Lorca has maintained the primary movement of the actiontowards the accomplishment of the marriage. All the while, hehas been building beneath the surface the potential contradictorymovement of the action to the point where it finally overwhelmsthe main momentum and replaces it with a new and fatally doomedmovement towards the union of the two lovers.
Once the flight of the lovers has taken place, the Mother is confrontedwith the discovery that her deepest fears about this marriagehave proved true.
Reed Anderson (in Federico García Lorca, Macmillan)
Practical work: Monologues.
The Mother's final speeches in this Act serve as a key momentfor an understanding of her character. On the one hand, she wantsher only surviving son to avenge on the Felix family the retributionwhich she thinks is deserved after years of feuding; on the otherhand, she is frightened in the deepest way imaginable that inhis desire to wreak violent revenge on Leonardo, her son willhimself be killed, leaving her not only defeated, but alone.
Her speech dramatises this climax; we can see just how wellit articulates the two most important motives in her life.
As an actor preparing a role for Blood Wedding, youmight prepare a monologue for your character, using just linesfrom the play but reassembling them, and omitting those whichserve more to further plot than to evoke character. You mightalso have to omit lines that are too firmly tied to a specificsituation or listener.
What does the final 'artificial' monologue tell us about thecharacter of the Mother?
A Monologue for the Mother.
(Muttering.) Damn the knife, damn them all and the devilwho brought them into the world. knives guns pistols, (Strongernow) even the sickle and the scythe anything that can slice througha man's body. An angel of a man, in the flower of his life, goingout to the vines or the olive groves, because they're his, hisfamily's and then he just doesn't come back. Or if he does, it'sonly so that you can lay out his body, and rub it with salt soit doesn't bloat in the heat.
If I were to live another hundred years I couldn't say enough.How can something so small, a gun, a knife, bring down a bullof a man? The months trail past, and the pain still stings myeyes and pulls at my hair. And my two dead boys lie silent, slowlyfilling with grass, turning to dust; two men who were like twoflowers and their killers, cool and fresh in prison, gazing atthe mountains.
He was so strong good blood. His father only had to lookat a woman and she would fall pregnant. That's the way it shouldbe. Men life.
Whenever I hear her name, it's like being struck with astone.
I didn't look at anyone until I met your father. And whenthe Felix murdered him, I looked straight ahead at the wall. Onewoman with one man, and nothing else.
In the three years we were married he planted ten cherrytrees (Recalling.) and the three walnut trees down by the mill,a whole vineyard and a Jupiter plant, the sort that gives brightcrimson flowers. But it dried up.
My son is handsome. He has never known a woman; he is asclean and pure as a sheet in the sun.
Do you know what marriage is? It's a man and his children,and a thick stone wall to keep the rest of the world out.
Even the blood flowing in my veins seems to ache. And allI can see is the hand that struck down my husband and son Youthink I'm crazy, don't you? Well, if I am it's because I've lockedtoo much away. But I'm screaming inside all the time, becauseI know who should be punished, and I know who really deservesthe shroud. And they just come and they take your dead away, andyou've got to stop screaming. And then the gossips start.
Men come and go like the wind. They've got to carry knivesand guns. But girls never even need to set foot in the street.
When I got to my son, he was lying in the middle of thestreet, and I soaked my hands in his blood, and licked them withmy tongue. Because it was mine as well. Can you understand that?And if I could I would take that dust red with his blood and putit into a crystal cup.
My head is full of memories of my men and the fights theyfought.
Always be affectionate with your wife, but if you thinkshe's getting too starry-eyed or too sour, then caress her justso that it hurts a bruising hug or a bite, and then a gentle kiss.She won't take it amiss, and she'll know exactly who's who, whogives the orders and who takes them. That's how your father taughtme.
The days to come will be terrible days.
A woman with not a single child to raise to her lips.
Nothing matters but the wheat my sons lie under and therain that washes their faces, and God himself who has laid themto rest.
Let them put a cross of bitter oleander on your breast,a sheet of shining silk to cover you; let the water weep betweenyour still hands.
The cross. The cross.
Neighbours, it was with a knife, just a little knife, thaton the appointed day between two and three, two men in love killedeach other. With a knife, just a little knife, that fits snugin the hand and slices so quickly through the startled flesh tostop at the point where the dark root of the scream lies tremblingenmeshed.
It fits so snug in the hand, but slices so quick throughthe startled flesh and there it stops, at the point where, tremblingenmeshed, lies the dark root of the scream.
Now similarly create a monologue from the text for a characterof your choice and work (with a partner acting as director) ata performance of it.
Blood Wedding: Act Three Scene One
When the curtain rises on the third act, Lorca has abandonedthe stylised realism of the first two acts in favour of a supernaturalexploration of the symbolic terms of the drama. At risk is theloss of all the dramatic tension built up in the previous act,but it seems that Lorca wished to build up a tension now on anentirely different level. The Woodcutters comprise the conventionaltragic chorus and their severe dialogue orients the spectator'semotions to the exact terms of the tragic action about to takeplace.
The Moon appears onstage dressed as a young woodcutter with awhite face, illuminating the forest with blue light; he singsa ballad of death, and when he disappears, an old Beggar WomanDeath in disguise, comes on to the wooded scene calling for themoonlight to return so that she can seek out her victims.
Adding to the intensity of the symbolic forest scene is the breathlessdialogue between the fleeing lovers. This is a scene of eroticrapture played out almost literally in the shadow of death.
Reed Anderson (in Federico García Lorca, Macmillan)
Ask yourself: what is the playwright's aim in this scene?
Ask yourself: what would my aim as a director be in presentingthis scene for performance?
Blood Wedding: Act Three Scene Two
The final scene is almost another act in itself. It opens witha second choral passage where two young girls dressed in darkblue are winding a skein of red yarn against a background of starkwhite walls. The setting is the Mother's house, but it is meantnow to suggest a church, a place where ritual is appropriate.The girls are speaking in a chanting rhythm, speculating to oneanother about what may have taken place after the wedding; a thirdgirl appears to announce the approach of the women, and of themen bearing the bodies. The Beggarwoman from the forest scenenow appears and she confirms to the girls the deaths of the twoyoung men.
From this point on, the scene is purely elegiac. The women mourntogether, but they are ultimately isolated from one another bytheir own individual experiences of the tragedy.
The three women brought together at the end on this glaring whitestage symbolically become one. The Mother is at the end of herlife, alone; the Bride, in the beginning of her womanhood andwidowed on her wedding day, is also alone, but neither wife nora mother; Leonardo's Wife is a widow who will repeat the patternof the widowed Mother.
Reed Anderson (in Federico García Lorca, Macmillan)
Practical work: Flamenco and Dance.
Watch Saura's film of the flamenco ballet adaptation of BloodWedding. He shows clearly how the simple tragic tale is as onewith the spirit of flamenco; with its pain, with its passions;with its with-held eroticism.
Curiously, perhaps, Saura declines to present Act 3. Thereare no Woodcutters: scene one is reduced to a stylised knife-fight.There is no mourning: scene two is reduced to one despairing gesturefrom the Bride.
Using flamenco music and ideas from the film, devise mime ordance performances of scenes one and two from Act Three.
Bibliography and Further Reading
Texts
Blood Wedding F García Lorca Hodder & Stoughton
(trans D Johnston)
Selected Poems F García Lorca Bloodaxe Books
(trans M Williams)
Books about Lorca and his work
Federico García Lorca Reed Anderson Macmillan
Federico García Lorca: A Life Ian Gibson Faber andFaber
Lorca: The Theatre Beneath the Sand Gwynne Edwards MarionByars
Books about Spain and Andalusia
South from Granada Gerald Brenan Penguin
A Rose for Winter Laurie Lee Penguin
Lorca's Granada Ian Gibson Faber
The introductory biographical sketch is from the programmeto a production of Blood Wedding by the Octagon Theatre,Bolton, directed by Lawrence Till.
BLOOD WEDDING
by Federico García Lorca
You need to know:
what happens in the play,
in as much detail as possible
so as to be able to refer quickly and accurately to key scenes;
something about Andalusian life in the 1920s and 30s;
something about Lorca's life and literary aims;
something about Lorca's drama as performed in his lifetime.
You need to be able to:
analyse character in the play;
identify how relationships are used by Lorca to develop characters;
see how Lorca uses both realism and symbolism to achieve his ends,
and perhaps to suggest ways in which this mixture of realism andsymbolism
could be handled in an actual performance/ production;
identify the main themes of the play,
and perhaps suggest ways of clarifying and establishing thesein performance;
identify problems the play would pose for a director or anactor
and find imaginative solutions;
articulate the response you would want an audience to make toa production of Blood Wedding.
You need to read and study:
the text;
the books by and about Lorca on the reading list provided;
your own notes, particularly of practical lessons, and youressays.
de
Cancion de jinete (1860)
En la luna negra
de los bandoleros,
cantan las espuelas.
Caballito negro.
¿Dónde llevas tu jinete muerto?
Las duras espuelas
del bandido inmovíl
que perdío las riendas.
Caballito frío.
¡Qué perfume de flor de cuchillo!
En la luna negra
sangraba el costado
de Sierra Morena.
Caballito negro.
¿Dónde llevas tu jinete muerto?
from
Song of the Rider (1860)
In the black moon
of the highwaymen,
the spurs sing.
Little black horse,
where are you taking your dead rider?
The hard spurs
of the motionless bandit,
his reins lost.
Little cold horse,
what a scent of knife-flowers!
In the black moon
the flanks of the Sierra Morena
were bleeding.
Little black horse,
where are you taking your dead rider?
La guitarra
Empieza el llanto
de la guitarra.
Se rompen las copas
de la madrugada.
Empieza el llanto
de la guitarra.
Es inútil
callarla.
Es imposible
callarla.
Llora monótona
como llora el agua
como llora el viento
sobre la nevada.
Es imposible
callarla.
Llora por cosas
lejanas.
Arena del Sur caliente
que pide camelias blancas.
Llora flecha sin blanco,
la tarde sin mañana,
y el primer pájaro muerto
sobre la rama.
¡Oh guitarra!
Corazón malherido
por cinco espada.
The Guitar
The wail of the guitar
begins.
The goblets of dawn
are broken.
The wail of the guitar
begins.
It is useless
to hush it.
Impossible
to hush it.
It weeps, monotonous
as water weeps,
as wind weeps
above the snowfall.
Impossible
to hush it
It weeps for things
far away.
Sand of the warm South
pleading for white camelias.
It weeps, like an arrow without a target,
an evening without dawn,
the first dead bird
on the branch.
Oh. guitar!
Heart mangled
by five swords.
de
Reyerta
En la mitad del barranco
las navajas de Albacete,
bellas de sangre contraria,
relucen como los peces.
Una dura luz de naipe
recorta en el agrio verde,
caballos enfurecidos
y periles de jinetes.
En la copa de un olivo
lloran dos viejas mujeres.
from
The Fight
In the middle of the gulch
the Albacete knives
gleam like fishes, beautiful
with blood of enemies.
A hard light, like playing- cards,
outlines on sour green
infuriated horses
and the profiles of the men.
In the crown of an olive
two old women weep.
BLOOD WEDDING
KS4 GCSE Knowledge about Language
We want to look here at the way a playwright
and, in this case, a translator,
have to match the literary elements of their language
to more colloquial elements ,
so that a play is both absorbing and convincing.
Blood Wedding, of course, was written originally in Spanish;
by looking at two different translations,
we can explore how different translators
have confronted this problem.
Read Act One, scenes one and two carefully before beginningthis work.
Read in David Johnston's translation (1989) the dialogue followingLeonardo's entry, on page 41, until his abrupt departure on page45: Why can't you just shut up?
How does the kind of language which Leonardo uses suggest hisagitation and unease? What advice would you give to an actor playingthis part?
Where, do you think, are there lines which are particularlygood examples of the colloquial? Which lines sound to you lessconvincingly realistic? Try to say what reasons there might befor the differences between the two different kinds of line.
Now look at this same section, translated by James Graham-Lujánand Richard L. O'Connell (1946):
LEONARDO Where's the baby?
WIFE He's sleeping.
LEONARDO Yesterday he wasn't well. He cried during the night.
WIFE Today he's like a dahlia. And you? Were you at the blacksmith's?
LEONARDO I've just come from there. Would you believe it? Formore than two months he's been putting new shoes on the horseand they're always coming off. As far as I can see he pulls themoff on the stones.
WIFE Couldn't just be that you use him so much?
LEONARDO No. I almost never use him.
WIFE Yesterday the neighbours told me they'd seen you on the farside of the plains.
LEONARDO Who said that?
WIFE The women who gather capers. It certainly surprised me. Wasit you?
LEONARDO No. What would I be doing there, in that wasteland?
WIFE That's what I said. But the horse was streaming sweat.
LEONARDO Did you see him?
WIFE No. Mother did.
LEONARDO Is she with the baby?
WIFE Yes. Do you want some lemonade?
LEONARDO With good cold water.
WIFE And then you didn't come to eat!
LEONARDO I was with the wheat weighers. They always hold me up.
WIFE (very tenderly, while she makes the lemonade)
Did they pay you a good price?
LEONARDO Fair.
WIFE I need a new dress and the baby a bonnet with ribbons.
LEONARDO (Getting up)
I'm going to take a look at him.
WIFE Be careful. He's asleep.
MOTHER-IN-LAW (coming in)
Well! Who's been racing the horse that way? He's down there, wornout, his eyes popping from their sockets as though he'd come fromthe ends of the earth.
LEONARDO (Acidly) I have.
MOTHER-IN-LAW Oh, excuse me! He's your horse.
WIFE (Timidly) He was at the wheat buyers.
MOTHER-IN-LAW He can burst for all of me.
(She sits down. Pause.)
Do you get the same impression of Leonardo from both translations?
Find examples of where you think one extract uses languagemore colloquially, and perhaps, therefore, more effectively, thanthe other. Ignoring other (important) aspects of the translator'swork - keeping the tone and flavour of the original, trying tosuggest the rhythms of foreign or local dialect, for example -which do you think would be the script you would choose if preparingto perform the play? Why?
Remember, you'll have to look very closely at small detailsof the translation to do this well; your points will need shortbut carefully analysed quotations. Make points clearly; don'tjust generalise.
BLOOD WEDDING
Comprehension Questions on Act Two
1. The Act begins with Leonardo visiting the Bride on the morningof her wedding; it ends with the two of them fleeing togetheron Leonardo's horse. How does the first section of Act 2 scenei (from the beginning to Leonardo's exit on page 61) prepare usfor the dramatic end to scene ii?
2. How does Lorca create, maintain and increase the tensionin this act?
3. Look at the end of scene i where Leonardo and his Wife areleft alone. How would you stage this extract to bring out theircharacters best at this point in the story. Give your reasons.
4. Show how the final moments of Act Two scene ii are crucialfor our understanding of the character of the Mother.
BLOOD WEDDING
Act One, scene one
PLOT
Mother has a feud with the Felixes;
her husband and son murdered;
the second son is now getting married;
bride (to be) has been Leonardo (Felix)'s girlfriend;
Bride's mother appears to have been unfaithful.CHARACTER
Mother
- worries about son;
- curses knives; hates weapons; obsessed;
- can't forgive Felixes;
- very protective of son;
- unsure about wedding;
- traditionalist;
- widow;
- concerned about B's previous relationship with Leonardo;
- hides herself away;
- isolation.
Bridegroom
- works hard;
- bought a vineyard;
- loves his mother;
- seems very close;
- frustrated by mother going on about knives and the Felixes.
BLOOD WEDDING
Act One, scene two
PLOT
Mother-in-law and Wife sing a symbolic lullaby;
we are introduced to Leonardo;
Wife asks him about where he's been;
there is an argument about the horse;
a girl brings news about the wedding and the luxuries the Bridegroom'sfamily have bought;
Leonardo storms off;
the baby wakes, lullaby repeated
CHARACTER
Leonardo
- snappy temper ;
- agitated;
- seems obsessed/ preoccupied by Bride;
- abrupt way of speaking;
- cf horse in lullaby (symbolism);
- bitter;
- tension with M-i-l;
- jealous about wedding & Bg.'s wealth.
Wife
- timid;
- reluctant to take issue with L.;
- careful not to annoy him;
- wants him to love her;
- close to tears;
- loyal to L.
Mother-in-law
- abrupt;
- nosy;
- not afraid to criticise L.;
- cynical about wedding.BLOOD WEDDING
Act One, scene Three
PLOT
Mother meets Father (of Bride) & the Bride herself at thecavehouse four hours away;
Very formal- like a business meeting;
Talk is about land, money and the qualities of childreb - almostlike a slave auction;
gifts; uncomfortable hospitality;
Mother and Bridegroom leave (as the Father shows them out) andthe Bride fights with servant about i) the presents, and ii) Leonardo'svisits on horseback;
the scene ends with the sound of (Leonardo's) horse whinnying.CHARACTER
BRIDE MOTHER FATHER
violent;
moody;
defensive at mention of Leonardo;
no passion in love for Bridegroom;
mystery about her relationship with L.;
shows one side of her character to Mother, Father and Bridegroom,another to servant;
proud.
still obsessed with knives;
still protective and proud of son;
'cold' idea of marriage;
concerned about wealth and inheritance.
(not a big part)
sees marriage as a business transaction, convenient;
wants to be wealthy ("Buy!");
speaks well of his daughter.BLOOD WEDDING
Act Two, scenes One and Two
PLOT
Hair do in the dawn;
Leonardo arrives early;
we learn about Leonardo's poverty having stopped his marriageto the Bride;
Bride really still wants Leonardo, though she tries to suppressthat feeling;
Leonardo expresses his love for the Bride;
Servant is appalled by their informality and by what they aresaying;
L and B act out a (false) farewell;
we can tell through the introduction of the (singing) guests thatsociety expects her to marry.
The servant prepares the wedding feast while the others havegone to the church;
after the guests return, the tension gradually increases, withpeople crossing and recrossing the stage, until the climax isreached when the Wife screams out that Leonardo and the Bridehave fled on the horse;
the Mother instigates the chase.ZSPECTACLE: singing/ dancing/formal greetings.CHARACTERy the spectacl
e and trying 'to prove Leonardo wrong';
MOTHER
still on about the Felixes;
LEONARDO
oblivious to all except the Bride;
a sullen presence at the wedding;
WIFE
genuinely pleased about wedding - greets Bride;
(at end of scene one) seems worried about her own marriage;
gets quite forceful,
stands up to Leonardo;
he does what she wants;
becomes hysterical when she discovers that her husband has runoff with the Bride;
SERVANT
almost like a mother to the Bride;
prepared to face Bride with unpleasant facts;
she's astute; she knows what's going on between B & L;
"hypocritical humility" of scene one become gentleras she teases the Bridegroom about marriage;
enjoys talking about sex.
BRIDEGROOM
attempts at love talk are embarrassingly stilted;
doesn't seem to be very independent;
cool and distant towards bride despite an attempt to tease herabout sex.
BLOOD WEDDING
Act Three, scene One
PLOT
Leonardo and the Bride are running away, pursued by the Bridegroom;
in the moonlight, both Leonardo and Bridegroom die in a knife-fight.
SYMBOLISM
Lorca uses
Beggarwoman to symbolise death;
a character to represent a personification of the moon;
woodcutters to comment on both sides of the story;
stage symbolism (at the end) to represent the deaths;
violins to represent the forest;
verse for Bride and Leonardo.CHARACTER
BRIDEGROOM
"The strength... of my father and my brother." (p88)
LEONARDO
Loving;
"It's not me who's to blame." (p92);
Persuasive.
BRIDE
"I love you. I love you. But leave me alone." (p91)TwoPoems by Federico García Lorca
The Moon Comes Out
When the moon comes out
the bells fade into silence
and impenetrable paths
come to light.
When the moon comes out
the sea floods earth's surface,
the heart feels like an island
in the infinite.
Nobody eats oranges
under the full moon.
The right thing is to eat
only green and icy fruit.
When the moon comes out,
one hundred identical faces,
your silver coins
weep in your pocket.
He Died at Dawn
Night of four moons,
one solitary tree,
one solitary shadow,
one solitary bird.
I seek in my flesh
the traces of your lips.
The fountain kisses the wind
without touching it.
I carry the No you gave me
in the palm of my hand
like a wax lemon
almost without colour.
Night of four moons,
one solitary tree.
Upon the point of a pin
my love is spinning.
Two Poems
by Federico García Lorca
Think about the following questions carefully before writinganswers to them in your books. Try to get all the work done inthe lesson; hand in your books at the end.
What mood is created by each poem?
How does Lorca use imagery to create this mood?
What do you find particularly effective about each poem?
How is the moon used as a central image in each poem?
How are images of the moon used in films and TV to create specificmoods?
Choose one of the poems. How would you illustrate it in a videoto accompany the voice of an actor reading the poem? (That is,what pictures would you use, and when?)
Now, write your own poem, setting it out neatly andstarting on a clean page.
Use the line When the moon comes out at the beginningof each of four or five verses (or stanzas as they shouldproperly be called). Try to create original and careful imagesand to create an unusual and effective mood.