Blood Wedding: Full Text and Introduction (NHB Drama Classics)
()
About this ebook
Blood Wedding is García Lorca's passionate, lyrical tale of longing and revenge: a twentieth century masterpiece.
Translated by Jo Clifford.
Related to Blood Wedding
Titles in the series (20)
Blood Wedding: Full Text and Introduction (NHB Drama Classics) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsElectra: Full Text and Introduction Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Country Wife: Full Text and Introduction (NHB Drama Classics) Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5All for Love: Full Text and Introduction (NHB Drama Classics) Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Miser: Full Text and Introduction (NHB Drama Classics) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Rover: Full Text and Introduction (NHB Drama Classics) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHedda Gabler: Full Text and Introduction (NHB Drama Classics) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Dance of Death: Full Text and Introduction Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Ivanov: Full Text and Introduction Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fuente Ovejuna: Full Text and Introduction Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsYerma: Full Text and Introduction (NHB Drama Classics) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFaust Parts 1 & 2 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hecuba: Full Text and Introduction Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5La Ronde: Full Text and Introduction (NHB Drama Classics) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rosmersholm: Full Text and Introduction (NHB Drama Classics) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Celestina Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Restoration Comedy: Three Plays: Full Text and Introduction (NHB Drama Classics) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTartuffe: Full Text and Introduction (NHB Drama Classics) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsUbu: Full Text and Introduction (NHB Drama Classics) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related ebooks
Symbolic Short Plays: American Theatre in the Twenty-First Century Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAnna Weiss (NHB Modern Plays) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Eugene Ionesco's "The Bald Soprano" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPerforming Shakespeare: Preparation, Rehearsal, Performance Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Shakespeare on Toast: Getting a Taste for the Bard Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsStefan and other plays: A Collection of Theatre Plays Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSalt Baby Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBlood Wedding (NHB Classic Plays) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRead-Aloud Plays Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOthello (NHB Classic Plays): (Frantic Assembly version) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBlood: A Scientific Romance Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHedda Gabbler Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPlays from VAULT 3 (NHB Modern Plays): Five new plays from VAULT Festival Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Jean Anoulih's "Antigone" Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Study Guide for Henrik Ibsen's "The Wild Duck" Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Washington Irving's the Legend of Sleepy Hollow: A Play in Two Acts Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Henrik Ibsen's "The Master Builder" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFour Commedia Dell'Arte Plays with Stage Direction Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNoughts & Crosses (NHB Modern Plays): Sabrina Mahfouz/Pilot Theatre adaptation Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJessica Swale's Blue Stockings: A guide for studying and staging the play Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTrigger Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Comedy for Serious People Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Kindertransport Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Heavenly Twins Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPillars of Society Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Cave Painter & The Woodcutter Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Small Book of Short Scripts for Social Change Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWinter of 88 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen - Delphi Classics (Illustrated) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Performing Arts For You
The Complete Sherlock Holmes Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Quite Nice and Fairly Accurate Good Omens Script Book: The Script Book Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Hollywood's Dark History: Silver Screen Scandals Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Trial Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Romeo and Juliet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hamlet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Becoming Free Indeed: My Story of Disentangling Faith from Fear Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Best Women's Monologues from New Plays, 2020 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Wuthering Heights Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Is This Anything? Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The World Turned Upside Down: Finding the Gospel in Stranger Things Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes: Revised and Complete Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Diamond Eye: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life through the Power of Storytelling Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Strange Loop Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Count Of Monte Cristo (Unabridged) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fifth Mountain: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lucky Dog Lessons: From Renowned Expert Dog Trainer and Host of Lucky Dog: Reunions Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Science of Storytelling: Why Stories Make Us Human and How to Tell Them Better Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Woman Is No Man: A Read with Jenna Pick Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Unsheltered: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Doctor Faustus: A Play Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Coreyography: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mash: A Novel About Three Army Doctors Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Tempest Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Importance of Being Earnest: A Play Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Robin Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Blood Wedding
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Blood Wedding - Federico Lorca
DRAMA CLASSICS
BLOOD WEDDING
by
Federico García Lorca
translated and introduced by
Jo Clifford
NICK HERN BOOKS
London
www.nickhernbooks.co.uk
Contents
Title Page
Introduction
Key Dates
Further Reading
Characters
Act One
Act Two
Act Three
Copyright and Performing Rights Information
Introduction
Federico García Lorca (1898–1936)
Lorca was born on 5 June 1898. The year was a hugely significant one in Spanish cultural and political history: it gave its name to a whole generation of writers who used the events of this year as a rallying cry in efforts to convince the Spanish people of their country’s deplorable state and the desperate need for re-evaluation and change. They were called the ‘Generation of ’98’, and they included Azorín, Baroja and Ángel Ganivet.
The historical event that inspired this movement was the disastrous war with the United States which led to the loss of Cuba, Spain’s last remaining colony. This apparently distant event was to have huge repercussions for Lorca. Cuba had been Spain’s principal source of sugar; Lorca’s father was to be astute enough to plant his land with sugar beet, and with the aid of a series of successful land purchases, he was to become one of the richest men in the Fuente Vaqueros district.
A long-term consequence of this was that Lorca himself never needed to earn his own living. There’s no question this wealthy background contributed both to the large volume, and the technical and emotional daring, of his work. As it happened, Blood Wedding in particular was hugely successful; but the financial security of his position left him absolutely free to write as he wanted without regard to the demands of the commercial theatre of his day.
However, the most immediate consequence for the young Lorca was that he spent his childhood as the rich son of the wealthiest landowner of a mainly poor village.
Perhaps the best way for us to imagine the impact on Lorca’s sensibility is to think of our own feelings towards the desperately poor of the Third World – or the homeless that many of us pass each day on the street. The contrast between his wealth and the poverty of so many of those around him left a deep impression on Lorca, which he was to express in later life in his autobiographical essay ‘My Village’.
The plight of one family affected Lorca particularly deeply. One of his friends in the village was a little girl whose father was a chronically ill day labourer and whose mother was the exhausted victim of countless pregnancies. The one day on which Federico was not allowed to visit their home was washing day: the members of this family had only one set of clothes, and they had to stay inside their house while their only clothes were being washed and dried. Lorca wrote:
When I returned home on those occasions, I would look into the wardrobe, full of clean, fragrant clothes, and feel dreadfully anxious, with a dead weight on my heart.
He grew up with a profound sense of indignation at this kind of injustice:
No one dares to ask for what he needs. No one dares . . . to demand bread. And I who say this grew up among these thwarted lives. I protest against this mistreatment of those who work the land.
The young man who wrote this protest at the end of his adolescence maintained a profound anger right to the end of his life. In an interview he gave in 1936, he stated: ‘As long as there is economic injustice in the world, the world will be unable to think clearly.’
He continued the interview with a fable to illustrate the difficulties of creating valid art in a situation of economic injustice:
Two men are walking along a riverbank. One of them is rich, the other poor. One has a full belly and the other fouls the air with his yawns. And the rich man says: ‘What a lovely little boat out on the water! Look at that lily blooming on the bank!’ And the poor man wails: ‘I’m hungry, so hungry!’ Of course. The day when hunger is eradicated there is going to be the greatest spiritual explosion the world has ever seen. I’m talking like a real socialist, aren’t I?
For Lorca, the art of creating theatre was totally bound up with the process of creating a better society:
The idea of art for art’s sake is something that would be cruel if it weren’t, fortunately, so ridiculous. No decent person believes any longer in all that nonsense about pure art, art for art’s sake. At this dramatic moment in time, the artist should laugh and cry with his people. We must put down the bouquet of lilies and bury ourselves up to the waist in mud to help those who are looking for lilies. For myself, I have a genuine need to communicate with others. That’s why I knocked at the door of the theatre and why I now devote all my talents to it.
This passionate anger at the injustice of human society, and equally passionate determination to create art that might remedy it, were fuelled not simply by his childhood experiences. As an adult, he had travelled to New York, and witnessed at first hand the devastating impact of the Wall Street crash:
It’s the spectacle of all the world’s money in all its splendour, its mad abandon and its cruelty… This is where I have got a clear idea of what a huge mass of people fighting to make money is really like. The truth is that it’s an international war with just a thin veneer of courtesy… We ate breakfast