80 pages • 2 hours read
Federico García LorcaBlood Wedding
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1932A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Act IIIAct Summaries & Analyses
Act III, Scene 1 Summary
The scene is set in a darkened forest. Three woodcutters enter and discuss the hunt for Leonardo and the Bride. They approve of Leonardo and the Bride’s actions, suggesting they are right to follow their passions, as “the blood couldn’t be denied” (49). When discussing the Bridegroom, witnessing him setting off after the Bride, they say that he “carried the fate of his family” (50). None believe that Leonardo and the Bride will escape the dozens of family members who are now hunting the woods. As the moon rises, and its light illuminates the forest, the three woodcutters speak in verse, requesting that the moon cast its light against the branches of a large tree, and allow the lovers to hide in its shadow.
After the three woodcutters leave, the Moon appears as a young woodcutter with a white face casting a luminous blue light. The Moon speaks in verse, in an extended monologue. This reveals the Moon’s longing for blood and eagerness to illuminate the hiding lovers with its light. The Moon expresses its intention to reveal the lovers, then passes off stage, its light dimming.
A Beggar Woman in a large cloak enters. She is the personification of Death. The Beggar Woman also speaks in verse, though her metrical lines are longer. She promises that the time of death is near, that the lovers won’t escape, and evokes waiting coffins and death shrouds. When the Moon and its light return, she grows excited. Both figures speak in free verse. The Beggar Woman instructs the Moon to shine its light on Leonardo’s breast, to illuminate where the dagger will pierce his heart. The Moon hopes that Leonardo and the Bridegroom “take a long time to die” (54). The two agree not to let the Bride and Leonardo reach the river, where they stand a chance of escape.
The Moon exits and its light dims. The Beggar Woman calls for it to bring its light back quickly. The Bridegroom and a Youth enter, and the Beggar Woman hides herself. The Youth suggests that the lovers may have escaped, but the Bridegroom is not dissuaded. He admits to feeling “the teeth of my whole family clenched in me so I can hardly breathe” (55). The Youth exits and the Bridegroom trips over the Beggar Woman, rousing her. She suggests in obscure language that he should prefer death. The Bridegroom doesn’t listen, and the Beggar Woman agrees to lead him to where the lovers are hiding.
The three woodcutters reappear, again speaking in verse. They evoke Death, claiming it is near, then beseech Death to have mercy and [l]eave them a green branch” (57). As they pass off stage, Leonardo and the Bride slip into sight. They also speak now in free verse. The Bride is overcome by grief at her decision and asks Leonardo to kill her, or give her his gun so that she might do it herself. Leonardo refuses and insists they continue to flee, but the Bride is overwrought by her emotions. She admits to loving Leonardo with a tempestuous desire, but is horrified at the consequences of her actions. Leonardo admits that he was never able to overcome his desire for her, that her wedding inflamed him past the point of self-control. He blames not himself, but the earth. The Bride tells Leonardo to flee on his own; she is aware that the honor code demands Leonardo’s murder. Leonardo won’t leave the Bride, and each speaks of being destroyed by their want for the other. They decide they cannot be free of their desires, nor can they find a place in society in which they can live peacefully. As their pursuers close in on them they embrace, and resolve to die together as they exit.
The Moon emerges and floods the stage with light. Two violins, representing Leonardo and the Bridegroom, reach a crescendo. Wailing screams cut them off. The Beggar Woman as Death appears centerstage with her back to the audience, and spreads out her cloaked arms like the wings of an enormous bird.
Act III, Scene 2 Summary
An entirely white room gives the sense of sanctity. Two girls dressed in blue sit on the floor winding a long thread of red wool. The girls, in verse, imagine the thread’s potential uses while a third girl enters and asks if they’d seen the wedding. The others say they hadn’t. The three then appear to divine Leonardo and the Bridegroom’s deaths by inquiring after the wool. The wool reveals: “The lover is speechless. \ The groom is red” (64).
Leonardo’s Wife and Mother-in-law appear. Leonardo’s Wife is desperate to know what happened in the forest, but her Mother instructs her to go home, care for her children, shut out the rest of the world, and “[g]row old and weep” (65). As they exit, the Beggar Woman as Death enters. At first, the third girl spurns her presence, but the two spinning recognize the Beggar Woman for what she personifies: Death. They question her about the events in the forest. The Beggar Woman confirms that Leonardo and the Bridegroom are dead, and that the Bride, covered in the blood of them both, is soon to return with the bodies. The three girls and the Beggar Woman exit.
The Mother of the Bridegroom and her sobbing Neighbour appear, speaking in prose. The Mother admonishes the Neighbour for crying, stating that she wants to be alone before she cries, and that her tears will come from the very center of her being. The Mother refuses the Neighbour’s offer to stay at her house, instead wanting to be alone with her grief and the earth. She says that she is no longer afraid of knives or guns. The Mother calms herself as mourners begin to arrive.
When the Bride arrives she is dressed in a black shawl for mourning and is weeping. The Mother observes her in a detached manner before walking over and striking her. She asks the Bride what has become of her son’s honor. The Neighbour holds the Mother back from inflicting more harm. The Bride encourages violence, saying that she came back so the Mother could kill her not with her hands but “with iron hooks, with a sickle” (68). She insists that she will die “clean” (69), or a virgin.
When the Mother refuses to kill her, the Bride declares that she loved the Bridegroom, but that even before she met him she was infused with a fiery desire that only Leonardo could quench. She knew she should get married and enter respectable society, but that nothing would stop her from returning to Leonardo, “even if I’d been an old woman and all your son’s sons had tried to hold me down by my hair” (69). At this, the Mother realizes that neither the Bride nor her son are to blame, and that the Bride is yet another female casualty of the patriarchal honor code. The Bride encourages the Mother to kill her again, to restore her honor. The Mother refuses and resigns herself to wait for death. The Bride asks if she can weep with her, and the Mother allows her to stay by the door.
Leonardo’s wife enters at the head of a progression carrying the bodies of the two men. She laments in verse that her virile husband’s life was as transient as “a mound of snow” (70). The three women watch as the procession passes. The Mother comments on how similar the two men are in death. As the other women offer their blessings, the Mother addresses them, accepting that the deaths were “appointed” by fate but driven by love. She declares that grief has penetrated to the root of her being.
Act III Analysis
The darkened forest where the first scene is set becomes increasingly surreal as lunar bodies and archetypical figures appear onstage. The forest is a primordial landscape where ancient passions are brought to light. The only other inhabitants of the forest, the Three Woodcutters, seem outside of the environment, drawn from the world of folk and fairy tale. Lorca’s intention is clear: He has brought his drama of ancient desires and consequences to an ancient stage where it can play out as it always done and how it will always in the future. We have a sense of Lorca’s theme of Fate and the Tragic Cost of Honor. A power transcending human agency is at work, something powerful and timeless.
The deaths of the husband and lover have symbolic importance, standing for the consequences of any human acting upon their stifled desires. These deaths evoke Lorca’s theme of The Incompatibility of Desire and the Social Order. The Bride also speaks to this, admitting that she wanted to marry the Bridegroom to conform to society, but knew that nothing could restrain her from Leonardo.
The Moon’s longing for blood implies a very different cosmology than one of a benevolent Christian sky-god. The personified forces of Lorca’s universe, the Moon and Death, are not passive. They hunger for blood, recognizing its importance in the life cycle. The Moon’s desire for blood is not limited to social transgressors, but extends to the apparent victim, the Bridegroom, whom the Moon also hopes will take “a long time to die” (54). This portrays how Nature is indifferently vicious and longs for regenerative blood. The chthonic forces that rule human fates lack human morals, in contrast to a moralizing patriarch in the sky.
The woodcutters, representatives of the primordial world, support the passion of Leonardo and the Bride, approving of their actions while knowing that they will lead to their destruction. In their function as a Greek chorus, they understand the demand of the deeper passions, recognizing they come from a place which is closer to lived reality, as opposed to the strictures of societal convention. All of the figures in the forest—the Woodcutters, the Moon, and the Beggar woman—speak of the impending deaths as though they are foregone conclusions, stripping the the lovers and the Bridegroom of agency and underscoring the pull and hold of Fate.
Lorca emphasizes fate with the three figures who spin yarn and open the final scene. The figures evoke the Moirai, or the Fates, of ancient Greek religion. The Fates personify destiny and often appear as three women spinning out threads, which are human lives. At the beginning of the final scene, the primordial forces of the universe confer, Death assuring the Fates that their decrees have been fulfilled. This recontextualizes a blood feud into an incident of universal significance.
The oscillating appearance of the Moon suggests its motion in the sky, at times slipping behind branches and allowing the scurrying humans a chance to move about outside its gaze. Lorca uses this technique to increase tension, allowing the audience to imagine Leonardo and the Bride hiding behind trees, slipping into the open as the Moon’s light is blocked by treetops. The Moon’s light functions as the observing intelligence of the universe, the inescapability of fate. It is a “round swan on the river,” a “Cathedral’s eye” (51).
The Bride and Leonardo speak in verse, rather than prose. Before this moment, verse has been primarily used in singing and village rhymes, whether lullabies or ritual wedding songs. This suggests that this mode of speaking accesses the deeper revolutions of the universe, which are evoked by poetry and song. When the Bride and Leonardo finally relay the depth of their true feelings, they do so in the forest, in verse; finally giving over to their deepest desires, it’s as if they have transcended the contemporary settings of their lives and are able to speak in the way of the natural forces of the universe.
At the emotional climax of the second scene, the Mother enters a process of personal redemption. This begins when she slaps the Bride, who begs to be killed for her transgressions. While her initial reaction seems to perpetuate of the cycle of violence, the Mother’s next statement broadens her actions beyond violent retribution. By asserting that the Bride is “not to blame” (69), the Mother recognizes the Bride as part of the wider net of casualties caused by patriarchal social dominance and the honor code. This evokes Lorca’s theme of Women as Casualties. After this, the Mother is able to include the Bride in her circle of mourners.
The Mother recognizes the similarity between her son and Leonardo, coupling them as “two men who were in love” who died at an “appointed time” (71). This expands the scope of the play beyond personal grievance to the society-wide suffering caused by the repressive honor system. The Mother’s final speech emphasizes society-wide suffering, witnessing the toll that the blood feud has taken on the whole community. The Mother recognizes that her son and Leonardo were both driven by love, not hate, and that they were brought low. She has moved from blaming the knife and now understands that the driving force is fate and human passion. This evokes Lorca’s theme of Fate and the Tragic Cost of Honor. A force larger than the two men—destiny but also uncontrollable human passion—is to blame.
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