''Doña Rosita the Spinster'' () 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 countries in the Americas **Spanish cuisine **Spanish history **Spanish culture ...

dramatist A playwright or dramatist is a person who writes plays, which are a form of drama that primarily consists of dialogue between characters and is intended for theatrical performance rather than just reading. Ben Jonson coined the term "playwri ...

Federico García Lorca Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca (5 June 1898 – 19 August 1936) was a Spanish poet, playwright, and theatre director. García Lorca achieved international recognition as an emblematic member of the Generation of '27, a g ...

. 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 whe ...

surrealist Surrealism is an art movement, art and cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists aimed to allow the unconscious mind to express itself, often resulting in the depiction of illogical or dreamlike s ...

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 The bourgeoisie ( , ) are a class of business owners, merchants and wealthy people, in general, which emerged in the Late Middle Ages, originally as a "middle class" between the peasantry and Aristocracy (class), aristocracy. They are tradition ...

life of the 1880s and the social

modernization Modernization theory or modernisation theory holds that as societies become more economically modernized, wealthier and more educated, their political institutions become increasingly liberal democratic and rationalist. The "classical" theories ...

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 {{1930s-play-stub