''Doña Rosita the Spinster'' ( es, Doña Rosita la soltera) is a
period play by the
20th-century Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
dramatist
A playwright or dramatist is a person who writes plays.
Etymology
The word "play" is from Middle English pleye, from Old English plæġ, pleġa, plæġa ("play, exercise; sport, game; drama, applause"). The word "wright" is an archaic English ...
Federico García Lorca
Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca (5 June 1898 – 19 August 1936), known as Federico García Lorca ( ), was a Spanish poet, playwright, and theatre director. García Lorca achieved international recognition as an emblemat ...
. It is subtitled "or The Language of the Flowers" and described as "a poem of 1900 Granada, divided into various gardens, with scenes of song and dance".
[García Lorca (1970, 133).] It was written in 1935 and first performed in the same year.
"The theme of the play", suggests Federico García Lorca, "is the passage of time" (which Lorca had developed in a different form in his
experimental
An experiment is a procedure carried out to support or refute a hypothesis, or determine the efficacy or likelihood of something previously untried. Experiments provide insight into cause-and-effect by demonstrating what outcome occurs when a ...
surrealist
Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to ...
play ''
When Five Years Pass'' in 1931).
[García Lorca (1963, 18).] Doña Rosita is a young woman who falls in love with a man who is called to South America to join his parents. He swears to return and Rosita waits, but learns that he has married someone else. The action is set in Granada, Spain in three different years, portraying the
bourgeois life of the 1880s and the social
modernization and beginning of World War I of the early 1900s. Lorca draws parallels between Doña Rosita's life and these historic periods, beginning with the vitality of her youth, the attainment of maturity, and finally the loss of all hope.
The key moment in the play occurs when a young relative addresses Rosita as ''Doña Rosita''. This form of address signals her change of status.
Works cited
* García Lorca, Federico. 1970. ''Doña Rosita, the Spinster''. In ''Five Plays: Comedies and Tragi-Comedies''. Trans. James Graham-Lujan and Richard L. O'Connell. London: Penguin. .
* García Lorca, Francisco. 1963. Introduction. In ''Five Plays: Comedies and Tragi-Comedies''. Trans. James Graham-Lujan and Richard L. O'Connell. London: Penguin, 1970. . p. 9–20.
*Stainton, Leslie. Lorca: a Dream of Life. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999. 393–397.
References
Plays by Federico García Lorca
1935 plays
Plays set in Spain
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