PART I

THE PLAYWRIGHT AND THE PLAY

Federico Garcia Lorca , the most famous of the contemporary Spanish

poets lived a short but productive life. He was a poet, a director of

amateur theatricals, an artist, a musician and a dramatist. Towards the

end of his life he wrote a trilogy of "village dramas "--Yerma, Blood Wed-

ding and House of Bernarda Alba . This paper concerns itself with the

last of the trilogy, written in 1936 and published after his death.

The first section of this paper deals with the external influences on

the script. It includes an examination of the various influences upon the

playwright as they specifically relate to the play. These influences

derived from Lorca's upbringing and heritage and from the social and

economic conditions of Spain in the 1930's. The play reflects Lorca's

reactions to these conditions. The study proceeds with an internal

analysis by discussing (1) theme, ideas, and style, (2) plot, (3)

characters and their interrelationships, (4) the function and mood of the

sets, costumes, and lighting. The results of this analysis will be

applied later to the thesis production.

External Influences

Federico Garcia Lorca, born in Granada in 1989, was the son of a

well-to-do farmer and an ex-school teacher. A childhood ailment,

which prevented him from speaking until he was three and from walking

until he was four, placed him almost constantly in the company of

women. His home life was a happy one, and his parents were eager to

educate Federico to an early understanding of literature. He became

familiar with Victor Hugo, Cervantes and later with Lope de Vega and

Calderon, the most prominent playwrights of the Golden Age of the

Spanish theatre. He started to study law in Granada but he was a medi-

ocre student and eventually dropped out. Years later, for some unexpli-

cable reason, he returned to school and received a law degree which he

never used.

He served his apprenticeship in music and letters in Granada. It

was there in that ancient city, once the Moorish capital of Spain, that

he became intimate with the old cultures: the classic Roman and Greek,

the Arab, Gypsy, and with the superb "language and imagery of the seven-

teenth century Spanish poets."

It was here too, that he learned to appreciate the nineteenth century

nostalgia for lost loves and diminutive gardens. The sensual metaphor
and the spicy idiom of Andalusian peasantry did not have to be exca-
vated from a lost folk tradition; they were still as alive here in Granada
as they had ever been since the Middle Ages.

All this had a great influence on his later works, for he had the ability to

* Edwin Honig, Garcia Lorca (Norfolk, Connecticut: New Directions

Books, 1947), p. 3.
2
Ibid.
 4

assimilate the traditions of the life and cultures around him.

He moved to Madrid in 1919 and returned to Granada once or twice

a year to visit his friends and family. It was during one of these visits

in 193 6 that he was killed by Franco's Falangist forces during the Spanish

Civil War. Much has been written about his death and some critics have

tried to make him a political martyr; however, recent writings infer that

he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and that he was a victim of

circumstances.

Lorca was not a political but rather a popular poet and playwright.

He wrote of and for the Spanish people as he saw them and his work was

loved and acclaimed by the illiterate and sophisticated alike. The people

of Spain identified with his characters and appreciated his knowledge of

the folk world of Spain.

Poetic and dramatic both, his genius grew not out of advance-garde
literary or political movements , but out of a richly functioning Spanish
tradition barely surveyed by most present day criticism. To approach
him as an artist at all, one must realize the extent of his integration
with that tradition, and understand the kind of sensibility able to
thrive so well within it.

Any discussion of Garcia Lorca's dramatic works must therefore

include a short examination of the literary traditions which emerged from

the old cultures of Spain. His works are an expression of national genius

for they reflect and transform the world of the Spanish people. His plays

Ibid. , p. iv.
are profoundly and revealingly Spanish and at the same time universally

human.

The main aspects of the Spanish lyric tradition which finds a new cul-
mination in Lorca's poetry are- the Medieval Arabic-Andalusian art of
amorous poetry together with the rarely popular ballad; the Renaissance
synthesis in Spain of the Greco-Latin poetic art, accomplished by the
sophisticated 'conceptist' poetry of Gongora; and the bread body of
Andalusian gypsy art known as canto jondo, 'deep song.'4

In the eleventh century, Arabic poets in Andalusia had perfected the

style of the short lyric. These poems were noteworthy for their obsession

with erotic love and a Platonic notion of chastity. Poets talked of a

morbid desire always tempered by the moral idea of sexual purity.«

The ballad also became popular at this time and by its very nature

developed a system of communicating with the people and with the intel-

lectual elite. This characterizes not only the work of Lorca, in his later

years , but also the work of every other major Spanish poet and playwright.

Contained within this ballad tradition is an unusually rich amalgam of

racial experience, and expression of the people's peculiar genius to

retrieve the best elements from Spain's many cultural inundations. The

tendency to assimilate whatever touches the country's essential spirit

makes Spanish literature a highly adaptable organism invigorated by each

4
Ibid. , p. 20.
5
Ibid., p. 21.
 successive wave.

Another cultural facet of the Spanish literary tradition is the con-

tribution of the outcast Gypsy tribes. They brought to Spain the "deep

song, " an orgiastic lament based on repetition of certain phrases or notes

and characterized by a guitar accompanying a high pitched nasal sensual

voice. The Gypsy lament is heavy with the atmosphere of blood and

death, and filled with the feelings of an outcast people.

Spain has not changed much since Medieval times. This most

Catholic country of Europe is a barren land outside of the big cities.

Peasant life for centuries has been simple and clear. The scene is

bleak, and the climate is hot and dry. Passions erupt quickly and sub-

side just as quickly. The necessities of existence reflect and are

reflected in every aspect of life. There is no place for unproductive

passion in the scheme of things; yet it is passion that underlies every-

thing and eventually brings tragedy into the peasant's life. Spain has

always been a land of feuds, for it is a land where a man's honor is all

important. Warren Carrier has said:

The roots of life lie in productiveness, in the creative. When not in

consonance with the necessities or the code of society, the forces that
nourish the creative--erotic passion and the passion of pride—bring
inevitable tragedy and death.

6
Ibid. , p. 30.
7
Warren Carrier, "Poetry in the Drama of Lorca , " Drama Survey,
III (February, 1963), p. 298.
 Lorca's plays find their resources and vitality in the realities of

Spanish life. He deals with the inner core of the reality of Spanish life

in its physical and moral terms in a way that reminds one of the great

Spanish dramatists of the Golden Age. Honor and appearances were very

much the essence of the Golden Age of drama; and so were the problems

of lust and mysticism. But where Calderon would illustrate an "act of

faith" in dramatic terms, Lorca , who deals largely with peasant life,

accepts for his characters the stoic, realistic faith of the Spanish church

in the country, and discovers the more fundamental attitudes and the basis

of life beneath it.

Stoicism is an important aspect of the village life of Spain. When

Lorca's generation was growing up Spain was trying to recover from years

of defeat, bitterness and unrest. The country had been plagued by famine,

lack of industry, earthquakes and epidemics, floods and war. The people

were imbued with centuries of Moorish Medieval Catholic breeding. Their

moral code had not changed. Women were valued for their sons. A woman

in Spain was either a mother or a prostitute; lust and family were on

opposite ends of the spectrum. The appearance of honor was valued more

highly than honor itself. Society was governed by tradition.

Internal Analysis

The House of Bernarda Alba is the last and most mature play written

by Federico Garcia Lorca. The writer sub-titles his play A Drama About

Women in the Villages of Spain and then states that "these three acts
 8

are intended as a photographic statement." It is in fact the most real-

istic of Lorca's dramas both in structure and characterization. However,

it is realism through the eyes of a poet. Symbolism is evident through-

out the script and dictates the style of production.

Women in their Spanish essence are the characters; the white-

walled home which is both a jail and a convent is the scene; and the

action is the meeting of the irresistible force of erotic love and passion

and the immovable object of maternal honor. Its honor is both that ot

the cult ot virginity and that of class. The force ot passion erupts against

a code ot society and erupts in tragedy. The terms are deepened and made

more effective dramatically by personifying honor in the arbitrary tyran-

nical will of Bernarda , the protagonist of the play. The nature of the

code is seen not only in terms of society but in terms of the indomitable

will ot Bernarda .

The dramatic tension is bom out of this clash of wills—the domi-

neering will of the mother, upheld by tradition, custom and social values

against the deaf and invincible wills ot the daughters, motivated by their

thirst for living. Over all of this hangs the mood of a tragic sense of

life against which nothing avails.

The over-all structure or plot ot The House ot Bernarda Aloa is well

defined. Exposition, complication, climax, and denouement are all set

down in a clear cause and effect sequence. They are, as Honig says:

. . . dramatically self determined: determined, that is, by the

 strict necessity ot character and situation, and not by an auxiliary
concern for the supernatural, pictorial, musical, or dance effects.9

The characters in the play are all women. It is set in the country

house ot Bernarda Alba, a caste-proud wealthy widow with five daughters.

The play opens in the interior ot this house with a scene between Poncia,

the general household servant, and her assistant, a maid. The expository

dialogue between the two reveals that Bernarda and her daughters are

attending the funeral of the master of the house. The scene also reveals

the feeling ot hate that pervades this house, and the plight of the peasant-

servant in Spain. Poncia is complaining about Bernarda:

Poncia. Thirty years washing her sheets. Thirty years eating her lett-
overs. Nights ot watching when she had a cough. Whole days peek-
ing through a crack in the shutters to spy on the neighbors and carry
her the tale. Lite without secrets from the other. But in spite of that
curse her. May the pain of the piercing nail' strike her in the eyes .

Servant. Poncia!

Poncia . But I'm a good watchdog. I bark when I'm told and bite the
beggars' heels when she sics me on 'em, but one of these days I'll
have enough.

Servant. And then. . . ?

Poncia . Then I'll lock myself in a room with her and spit in her tace—
a whole year. 'Bernarda , here's tor this , that and the other.' Till I
leave her just like a lizard the boys have squashed. For that's what
she is--she and her whole family! Not that I envy her her life. Five
girls are left her, live ugly daughters--not counting Angustias, the
eldest, by her first husband who has money. . .

9
Honig, Garcia Lorca, p. 220.
 10

Servant. Well I'd like to have what they've got!

Poncia. All we have is our hands and a hole in God's earth.

Servant. And that's the only earth they'll ever leave to us—to us who
have nothing! *"

The servants' conversation is interrupted by the entrance of

Bernarda, her daughters (Angustias, Magdalena, Martirio, Amelia and

Adela), and the women who attended the funeral. Prayers are said quickly

and Bernarda shouts after them as they leave:

Go back to your house and criticize everything you've seen! I hope

it'll be years before you pass under the archway of my door again. 11

She promises to seal her daughters in the house for eight years of mourning

while they embroider their hope-chest linens. Adela the youngest daughter

enters and reports that Angustias, the eldest, has been watching the men

in the courtyard through a crack in the door. Bernarda calls Angustias

into the room and slaps her. Then she orders all the girls to leave the

room so she can question Poncia as to what the men were saying. When

Bernarda and Poncia leave the stage the daughters enter. Here, insight

is gained into their characters. Pepeel Romano's courtship of Angustias

is revealed. He is a young man of twenty-five who, though disposed to-

ward Adela because of her youth, wants Angustias because of her money.

10
Lorca, Three Tragedies of Federico Garcia Lorca , pp. 158-59.
H
Ibid. , p. 164.
 11

Adela enters and hears about the courtship and shouts her rebelliousness.

The act closes with the wild entrance of Maria Josefa, Bernarda's half-

crazed mother, who is kept locked up in the house. She has escaped from

her room, and her final cry fixes the situation of the play firmly:

I don't want to see these single women, longing for marriage, turning
their hearts to dust ... I want to get away from here! Bernarda ! To
get married by the shore of the sea—by the shore of the sea. 12

The second act opens in ominous silence. Bernarda's daughters

and Poncia are sewing and embroidering. They speak in short, subdued,

bitter phrases. Poncia warns Bernarda of impending grave danger and

Bernarda ruthlessly assails her servant for this warning. Martirio's lust

for Pepe is also revealed, for she has stolen a picture of Pepe from

Angustias' dresser and has it hidden under her pillow. A great commotion

is heard outside and everyone rushes out but Adela and Matririo. In a

scene of uncontainable emotion, Adela admits to having received Pepe

the night before, and Martirio vows to tear him out of her arms. Quickly,

a servant enters to explain that an unmarried girl is being dragged through

the streets, because she had a baby and then killed it. Bernarda heartily

approves and shouts:

Yes—let them all come and kill her . . . Finish her before the guards

12 Ibid. , pp. 175-76.

 12

come! Hot coals in the place where she sinned.

At this, in pity and terror, Adela as the lights dim screams: "No! No! "14

In the final act, the suppressed restlessness that leads to the climax

is introduced with Bernarda's solemn conversation with a neighbor,

Prudencia. All the daughters are at the table but all are itching to leave.

The stallion's hoot-beats are heard on the stable wails. Bernarda's

stubborn pride shows itselt as she cnooses to ignore tne conilict among

ner daughters . Pepe's wedding to Angustias is imminent, but he will not

come visiting outside ot Angustias' window tonight as he has on previous

nights. With this news, Bernarda orders her daughters to bed. Soon alter

Bernarda retires, Adela appears in her petticoat, pretending to want a

drink, oi water. As she goes out Maria Joseta appears again and in her

madness, in a scene with Martirio, she illuminates with insight the

situation in this house.

Pepe el Romano is a giant. All ot you love him. But he is going to

devour you because you're grains ot wheat. No not grains oi wheat,
Frogs without tongues . *«

She leaves and Martirio calls Adela in from outside. She enters and

13
Ibid., p. 195.
14
Ibid.
lb
Ibid. , p. 206.
 13

admits that she has been with Pepe. Martirio in her anger and jealousy

struggles with Adela and arouses the family as a whistle is heard outside

the door. Bernarda enters with her gun and shoots at Pepe as Adela goes

screaming from the room. Bernarda's aim is faulty. A thud is heard in

Adela's room. Poncia breaks down the door and finds that Adela has

killed herself. Solemnly, frantically, Bernarda takes the scene in hand,

her family pride ruling once again:

My daughter died a virgin. Take her to another room and dress her as
though she were a virgin! No one will say anything about this! She
died a virgin. Tell them, so that at dawn, the bells will ring twice.
. . Tears when you're alone. We'll drown ourselves in a sea of mourn-
ing. She, the youngest daughter of Bernarda Alba, died a virgin. Did
you hear me? Silence, silence, I said. Silence! 16

This is a fitting ending for a highly explosive, well-defined and struc-

turally sound plot.

Bernarda is the symbol and the heroine of the play. More symbol

than person she is a terrible creature who leads her daughters into total

frustration. She is the repressor of the life force, but she is at the same

time an admirable character in her steadfast honor, even though she has

condemned her daughters to an unnatural life of restraint. It is the

paradox of her character and the situation which gives the play its

ultimate strength. Bernarda is the image of Spain itself, cloistering her-

16
Ibid., p. 210.
 14

self in sterility and frustration for the sake of practical honor and reli-

gious mysticism. Her house is a jail of localism, of narrow and tradi-

tional intolerance and the terms of this kind of life are impossible.

Bernarda is concerned less with the death of her daughter than with the

appearance of honor. This attitude is underscored with Bernarda's control

as the curtain closes at the end of the play—despite everything she has

saved the family's honor.

The symbolism of the play is further extended in the case of the

five daughters, for they are intended more as representatives of general

feminine attitudes than as persons in a real family group. They become

almost a collective character, but each retains her own idiosyncrasies.

Martirio, ..wenty-four, as her name suggests has adopted a fatalistic

attitude. A hunch-back, who hides behind her mask of ugliness, she

wants men desperately but is afraid of them. Her one chance of love

came and went when her mother stopped a suitor from visiting at her

window because his father was a peasant. Her sex-drive, which has

been kindled by the sight of Pepe el Romano and his daily visits to the

windows of her sisters, is now driving her crazy. Hiding her hatred and

longing under her mask of meek submission, she spies on Adela, catches

her, and brings about the climax of the play.

Angustias--"anguish"—at thirty-nine is the oldest and ugliest

of the five daughters. She is her mother without her mother's strength.

Although she has money, she is a physical wreck. She knows life has
 15

passed her by, but when suddenly it seems to deal her a winning hand

she turns into a gushing girl of eighteen. She is absurd, but not comic.

She knows Pepe loves her money, knows this marriage is wrong, but she

must deny this knowledge if she is to have even a tiny corner of life. In

the end she knows she is as dead as Adela, but she must go on living.

Magdalena is the least hopeful of all. She is the most bitter

because her unhappiness has no direction. Maria Josefa calls her a

hyena-face- the hyena feeds on the week and the crippled. She finds

sadistic pleasure in the unhappiness of the others. Having loved her

father best of all she weeps bitterly for him, and resigns herself to

eight years of mourning.

Amelia, the character Lorca forgot, and the least developed char-

acter in the play, at times seems infantile and vacuous. She is the

least bitter of the girls but still is not untouched by this house of horrors

she lives in.

Adela is simply youth with the courage to take what it wants with-

out regard to consequences. She is proud of her body, refuses to let it

wither away behind the white walls of Bernarda's prision. She is willing

to fight for her right to love, but she must in the end destroy herselfjfor

the moral code of life in Spain dictates this.

The only character in the play who is beyond the tyrannical will of

Bernarda is Maria Josefa, a mad-woman. In her several scenes on stage

her lunacy reveals the suppressed madness of all the women in the house.
1
16

She tries to escape the prison but cannot, and so she foretells what will

happen in the end.

Poncia , the old family retainer is part servant, part peasant, and

part beggarwoman. She brings a bit of vulgar gaity and lustiness into the

house of Bernarda Alba. She, wisest amongst them, warns Bernarda what

her one-sidedness will bring about; however, it is to no avail. At once

shrewd and bitter Poncia watches the situation develop in the play, but

because of her station in life she can do nothing about it.

Pepe el Romano, the unseen man in the play is at least as important

as all of the other characters. He is the catalyst of the action. He is the

stallion kicking against the stable walls. Nothing happens to him; every-

thing happens because of him. He is the sex symbol, the Spanish male.

As this director has stated before this is not a totally realistic play.

Poetic imagery is apparent throughout the action. The characters became,

with the exception of Poncia, highly symbolic in nature. The set there-

fore should fit the poetic nature of the play. The prison-like walls

should be stark giving the viewer a feeling of oppressive heaviness,

parched dryness and the sterility of the household. The feeling of

confinement must be present although adequate stage space for an inter-

esting flow of movement is essential. A feeling of height is also essential,

for the sterile walls loom up and around the characters leaving them no

escape.

The set should be sparcely furnished giving the viewer the feeling
 17

that this is an uncomfortable house. Throughout the entire three acts

only a table, chairs and four short stools should be used. Several levels

should be provided to give the director an opportunity to create interesting

tableaux. The lighting should give the feeling of the endlessly hot summer.

Again the house should be uncomfortable and the lighting can help here.

The sets, and lights should reveal the tragic nature of this poetic

tale. Against the black-robed gloom of an enforced eight years mourning

period the spirit of youth is set, developing, within this unnatural

environment, forbidden emotions. It is a dark tale, but it is narrated with

such skill and it is so illuminated by the almost static figures that it

assumes the beauty of ebony.

In conclusion, this chapter has dealt with both an internal and an

external analysis of The House of Bernarda Alba by Federico Garcia Lorca.

In part, this study should have justified this writer's choice of the play

for intensive study and future production. It is an exciting script, complete

with challenging acting and staging chores because of its symbolic nature.

Other factors which entered into the decision to produce this play

are as follows: (1) the play has a cast of ten women, facilitating production

on this campus, (2) it is a one-set play, (3) the talent is available to

produce a sound production of this excellent script, (4) it is a short play

which could be rehearsed adequately in a very limited rehearsal period,

and (5) it is a challenge in stylistic consistency.

The interpretive, stylistic and mood elements have been analyzed.

 18

What remains is an amalgamation ot these elements on the stage to create

a vehicle which represents the playwright's message.