a zapatera prodigiosa (firstperformed 1930, amplified 1935, pub. Buenos Aires, 1938; The Shoemaker'sProdigious Wife in Collected Plays) established him in the public eye, while hisfostering of popular theatre gave him a left-wing reputation which contributed tohis death (although his homosexuality also made him a target). His reputation as a playwright rests, however, mainly on the three 'folktragedies', Bodas de sangre (Madrid, 1935; Blood Wedding), Yerma (BuenosAires, 1937) and La casa de Bernarda Alba (Buenos Aires, 1940; The House ofBernarda Alba: all three tr. J. Graham-Lujan & R. L. O'Connell, in III Tragedies,NY, 1959, incorporated into Collected Plays), whose settings recall theRomancero gitano, as do the unspecified dark forces (associated with earth,blood, sex, water, fertility/infertility, death, and the moon) which appear tomanipulate the characters in Bodas de sangre and Yerma. Both these plays arerichly poetic, with an almost ritualized primitivism (Lorca was highlysuperstitious, and his dark forces were not mere dramatic ploys). La casa de Bernarda Alba is starker: deliberately prosaic, more readilyinterpretable as social criticism (i.e. of the pressures of convention, theimprisoning effect of mourning customs, the frustration of female sexuality by theneed to wait for an acceptable match), but it is so dominated by the titlecharacter - who tyrannizes her five daughters - that it emerges as the study of aunique individual rather than a typical woman. Each tragedy has oneoutstanding female role, those of Yerma and Bernarda having been written forthe great tragic actress Margarita Xirgu. Lorca's technical experimentation (which has affinities with innovators asdissimilar as PIRANDELLO and BRECHT) was immensely versatile, and he hada superb sense for stage-effects to reinforce the web of his recurrent imagery. The Faithless WifeSo I took her to the riverbelieving she was a maiden,but she already had a husband.It was on St. J...
