Federico Garcia Lorca's Theatrical Works: Themes, Career, and Style

Federico Garcia Lorca: Theatrical Conception

Coexistence of Poetry and Reality in His Theater

Themes

The subject matter of Federico Garcia Lorca's plays is deeply unified and not different from what unifies his poetry. Critics have summed it up with different formulas: "the myth of impossible desire," the conflict between reality and desire, and "frustration." Lorca stages various tragic passions condemned to loneliness or death, with love often marked by infertility. This theme appears in several works embodied in women, but its scope is broader than that of a "feminist" theater. It is the tragedy of any person sentenced to a sterile life, a life of vital frustration. What frustrates Lorca's characters is situated on two levels: metaphysical enemy forces are time and death, and sometimes, social prejudices, conventions, and social yokes impede personal realization. Often both planes intersect. This theme makes Lorca a singular revival of the great tragic myths.

Career and Subgenres

The Beginnings

• The Butterfly's Evil Spell
• Mariana Pineda
• The Puppet Play of Don Cristobal
• The Shoemaker's Prodigious Wife

Avant-Garde Experience (Surrealist Influence)

Works of this stage are more daring than what was common in the theatrical horizon at the time. These findings advanced European theater by breaking down space-time logic and allowing for multiple interpretations.

• The Public
• When Five Years Pass

The Fullness: Tragedies and Dramas

In these works, the argument has little importance; there are few main characters, and choirs are involved. They thrive in a rural setting in which natural forces impose a tragic destiny. In most of them, women occupy a central place.

Expressive Resources

As in his poetry, there is frequent use of symbols, which affect not only the language but also the scenery of the works:

• Water: Fertility and strength as it flows, sterility and death when it is stagnant.
• The Moon: Death, but also fertility or sterility.
• Horse: Symbolizes erotic life force, but also a carrier of disastrous ads.
• Blood: May be life, but also alludes to suffering.

• Blood Wedding (1933): Lorca dramatizes the power of passion, sex, and the earth.
• Yerma (1934): Infertility comes as a curse for the actor.
• Dona Rosita the Spinster or the Language of Flowers (1935): On the unnecessary waiting for love.
• The House of Bernarda Alba (1936)

Language and Style

Use of Verse and Prose

His first two books are written entirely in verse. Gradually, the place of verse is reduced to moments of special intensity. Finally, his last work, The House of Bernarda Alba, is written almost entirely in prose, sometimes stark prose, and at other times, deeply poetic. As prose gains ground, the art of dialogue also grows, becoming more alive and intense. In general, his language is remarkable for its harmony of poetry and reality, that is, the coexistence of a popular flavor with a clear and powerful poetic breath. Its most prominent features are the abundant presence of symbols, metaphors, original comparisons, strong emotional connotations, and sensory formal findings of all kinds.

Sentence Structures

Predicative, active, transitive, reflexive (reciprocal), attributive (end), predicative, passive, or passive reflex.