Federico García Lorca’s Theatrical Universe
Lorca’s Poetic Theater: Themes and Evolution
Lorca’s theater can be described as poetic, not merely due to the extensive use of verse, but because poetry is the very root from which its arguments and language emanate. A dominant and recurring theme, also common in his poetry, is the confrontation between the individual and authority. The individual wields desire, love, and freedom as weapons but is ultimately defeated by authority. A majority of his leading ladies grapple with frustration.
Early Works, Farces, and Lyrical Drama
His first dramatic attempt, The Curse of the Butterfly, was flawed, yet this comedy introduced themes that would recur: love, death, and illusion. The subsequent play, the tragicomedy Don Cristóbal and Señora Rosita, is a puppet farce, similar to The Puppet Play of Don Cristóbal, where the puppets cannot hide the sad background of the plot. This line of theatrical farce includes other examples, such as The Shoemaker’s Prodigious Wife. These are pieces that provoke a bitter laugh, often based on the traditional theme of a young woman married to an old man. Mariana Pineda, a popular romance in three “pictures” (acts), is an approach to lyric drama, representing the story of a heroine executed for embroidering a Republican flag during the absolutism of Fernando VII.
Surrealist Influence and Later Plays
Some sketches, like Buster Keaton’s Walk, announce a turn toward surrealism, a style also present in his poetry. Two significant works testify to this change: The Public and When Five Years Pass. The first, highly experimental, explores homosexual love: a man seeks complete and pure love but encounters ‘the public,’ which only accepts relationships sanctioned by the church or conventional morality. The second is an ‘impossible comedy,’ negating the spatial and temporal conventions of realistic theater. In 1935, Play Without a Title emerged, featuring links to surrealism with a social and didactic intent. That same year, Lorca wrote Doña Rosita the Spinster, a drama about a spinster who awaits the arrival of her beloved, who will never return.
The Rural Trilogy: Lorca’s Dramatic Peak
Lorca’s most important works are often grouped as the ‘rural trilogy’: Blood Wedding, Yerma, and The House of Bernarda Alba. These plays share common features: the sexual nature of the conflicts, a female protagonist, the Andalusian countryside setting, and a tragic outcome.
Blood Wedding
Blood Wedding centers on the preparations for a wedding between the Bride and Groom. However, just as the union is to take place, Leonardo, the Bride’s former lover, appears, and they flee together. The Groom initiates a pursuit, and in the ensuing confrontation, both Leonardo and the Groom are killed. The powerful fusion of realism and poetry, prose and verse, and its dense, dramatic atmosphere make it a memorable work.
Yerma
Yerma is the tragedy of a woman consumed by her barrenness. Yerma desperately desires to be a mother, but children do not come. She begins to despair and blames her husband, Juan, for her infertility. She undertakes various pilgrimages in search of a miracle. Given the futility of her attempts and her husband’s indifference to her maternal desires, she ultimately murders him, thereby extinguishing any possibility of having a child with him and sealing her tragic fate.
The House of Bernarda Alba
The House of Bernarda Alba is considered by many to be a summit of Lorca’s theatrical achievement. Upon the death of her second husband, Bernarda Alba imposes a strict eight-year mourning period on her five daughters, who are virtually imprisoned in their home. However, their repressed desires and instincts emerge. Pepe el Romano becomes engaged to the eldest daughter, Angustias (for her inheritance), but secretly has an affair with the youngest, Adela. This triggers a fierce battle of passions, particularly involving Adela and the envious Martirio, which culminates in a tragic end: Adela’s suicide. This play masterfully brings together Lorca’s great obsessions with authority, repression, desire, and tragic fate.