Blood Wedding

Full Text and Introduction (NHB Drama Classics)

Federico Lorca

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781780011264
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Drama
• Index: Literature

The NHB Drama Classics series presents the world's greatest plays in affordable, highly readable editions for students, actors and theatregoers. The hallmarks of the series are accessible introductions (focussing on the play's theatrical and historical background, together with an author biography, key dates and suggestions for further reading) and the complete text, uncluttered with footnotes. The translations, by leading experts in the field, are accurate and above all actable. The editions of English-language plays include a glossary of unusual words and phrases to aid understanding.

Blood Wedding is García Lorca's passionate, lyrical tale of longing and revenge: a twentieth century masterpiece.

Translated by Jo Clifford.

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 vineyard.

MOTHER. Three years. Wasn’...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Key Dates
• Further Reading
• Blood Wedding
• Copyright and Performing Rights Information