Lorca: Three Plays

Full Texts and Introductions (NHB Drama Classics)

Federico García Lorca, Jo Clifford

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781780018232
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Drama
• Index: Literature

Three of Federico García Lorca's most famous plays in a single volume, translated from the Spanish and introduced by one of Scotland's finest playwrights, Jo Clifford.

'There's fire burning in my head.
There's an ocean drowning my heart.'

Lorca's passionate, lyrical tales of longing and revenge put the spotlight on the rural poor of 1930s Spain and are considered masterpieces of twentieth-century theatre. These plays exhibit Lorca's intense anger at the injustices of society, and his determination to create art that might remedy it.

The collection contains Blood Wedding, Yerma and The House of Bernarda Alba, in sensitive and playable translations, and a full introduction to Lorca, his times and his work.

The Nick Hern Books Drama Classic Collections series brings together the most popular plays from a single author or a particular period. They offer students, actors and theatregoers a series of uncluttered, accessible editions, accompanied by comprehensive introductions. Where the originals are in English, there is a glossary of unfamiliar words and phrases. Where the originals are in a foreign language, the translations aim to be both actable and accurate – and are made by translators whose work is regularly staged in the professional theatre.

BLOOD WEDDING

Characters

THE MOTHER

THE BRIDE-TO-BE (later THE BRIDE)

THE MOTHER-IN-LAW

LEONARDO’S WIFE

THE MAID

THE NEIGHBOUR

GIRLS

LEONARDO

THE BRIDEGROOM

THE FATHER OF THE BRIDE-TO-BE

THE MOON

YOUNG MEN

WOODCUTTERS

THE MOON

THE BEGGARWOMAN (DEATH)

ACT ONE

Scene One

A room painted yellow.

BRIDEGROOM (coming in). Mother.

MOTHER. What?

BRIDEGROOM. I’m going.

MOTHER. Where?

BRIDEGROOM. To the vineyard. (About to leave.)

MOTHER. Wait.

BRIDEGROOM. What do you want?

MOTHER. I want to give you some food to take.

BRIDEGROOM. Don’t bother. I’ll eat grapes. Give me the knife.

MOTHER. Why?

BRIDEGROOM (laughing). To cut them off the vine.

MOTHER (muttering as she looks for it). Knives . . . knives . . . I curse them. Curse them all and the criminals who make them.

BRIDEGROOM. Let’s talk of something else.

MOTHER. And machine guns and pistols and knives and sickles and scythes.

BRIDEGROOM. That’s enough.

MOTHER. Everything with a blade that can cut open the body of a man. A beautiful man, with a mouth like a flower. A man who goes out to his vines or his fields or his olive groves because they are his . . .

BRIDEGROOM (lowering his head). Be quiet. Please . . .

MOTHER. . . . and then never returns. Or if he does, if he does come back it’s only so we can cover his head with a shroud or cover him with salt to stop his corpse swelling. I don’t know how you dare carry a knife in your belt or why I keep one in my house. It’s like keeping a snake.

BRIDEGROOM. Haven’t you said enough?

MOTHER. No. I’ll never say enough. Not even if I lived to be a hundred. First they killed your father who smelt like a rose. I only enjoyed him three years. Then they killed your brother. And is it right and is it just that something as small as a pistol or a knife can finish off a man? A man is a bull, it should take more than such a tiny thing. So no. I’ll never be silent. Months pass. Years pass, and despair bites into me. I can feel it gnawing. At the back of my eyes. At the roots of my hair.

BRIDEGROOM (fiercely). Will this never end?

MOTHER. No. No, this will never end. Can anyone bring your father back? Anyone bring back your brother? And people talk of jail. But what’s that? They can eat there. The murderers. They can eat there, and smoke if they want, and play their guitars. And my two dead bodies turning into grass. Slowly turning into grass. With no voice in their heads. Only dust. Two men once fresh as flowers. While the murderers live in jail. Cool as cucumbers. With a view of the mountains . . .

BRIDEGROOM. So you want me to kill them?

MOTHER. No. No, I’m only talking because . . . They went out that door. How can I bear to see you go out of it too? And I don’t like you carrying a knife. It’s just . . . I hate you going out the house.

BRIDEGROOM. The nonsense you talk.

MOTHER. I wish you were a girl. Then you’d stay at home and we’d do the sewing together. We’d embroider tablecloths and knit woolly jumpers for the winter.

BRIDEGROOM (taking the MOTHER by the arm, and laughing). Mother, what if I took you with me to the vineyard?

MOTHER. And what would an old woman do in the vineyard? Would you lie with me under the grapes?

BRIDEGROOM (picking her up in his arms). You? You old old old old old woman, you.

MOTHER. Your father used to take me. Yes. There was a man for you. Good stock. Your grandfather left a child in every street corner. That’s how it should be. Men being men. Grass being grass.

BRIDEGROOM. Mother. What about me?

MOTHER. What about you?

BRIDEGROOM. Have I got to explain it all over again?

MOTHER (gravely). That.

BRIDEGROOM. Do you think it’s a bad idea?

MOTHER. No.

BRIDEGROOM. Well then?

MOTHER. I’m not sure I really know. You bring it up like that, all of a sudden, and it throws me. I know the girl is good. And that’s right, isn’t it? I know she’s got good manners, and I know she’s a good worker. She can bake her own bread and sew her own clothes and yet whenever I think of her name it’s as if my head was being hit by a stone.

BRIDEGROOM. That’s ridiculous.

MOTHER. No. It’s not ridiculous. It’s just I’ll be left on my own. You’re all that I’ve got left and I don’t want you to go.

BRIDEGROOM. But you’ll come with us.

MOTHER. No. I can’t leave your father and your brother here on their own. I have to go and see them every morning. Because if I didn’t, one of that family of murderers, one of the Felix, one of them could die and they might bury them beside my dead. And I couldn’t bear that. Never. Never! Because I would have to dig them up with my fingernails and smash their bones against a wall.

BRIDEGROOM (angrily). And now you’ve started. Again.

MOTHER. I’m sorry. (Pause.) How long have you been seeing her?

BRIDEGROOM. Three years. Enough time to buy the vineyar...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Introduction to Federico García Lorca
• Introduction to Blood Wedding
• Introduction to Yerma
• Introduction to The House of Bernarda Alba
• Key Dates
• Further Reading
• Blood Wedding
• Yerma
• The House of Bernarda Alba
• Copyright and Performing Rights Information