Tragedy In Blood Wedding

Blood Wedding-Federico García Lorca
The play ‘Blood Wedding’ by Federico García Lorca, is a naturalistic tragedy written in the 1930’s about love, passion and death somewhere in the south of Spain, Andalusia. It tells the story of a forced marriage between a bride and her bridegroom. A marriage meant to be due to the expectations of society, but a marriage that means nothing, as true love isfound between the bride and her ex-husband, Leonardo. Tragedy in the play refers to, not only the tragedy of the love missed between Leonardo and the Bride, but also a constant conflict between the individual wishes and the societal decrees and laws. Lorca conveys this idea with the help of adequate settings, some of the main themes within the play like fate and death, and finally, a range ofsymbols.
Firstly, there is a very symbolic use of setting throughout the whole novel. Visually, the stage is also lighted with one colour or a range of colours of similar tones. As the play advances and the plot varies, so does the colour of the stage.
The first stage direction indicates that the ‘room is painted yellow’. It is short and simple. Yellow is a colour that could be associated with wealth,as money is golden, and therefore connect to the rather wealthy bridegroom. In fact we will later discover that yellow is always related to the bridegroom, even at the moment of his death, where his lips are described to be yellow. This colour is also bright and cheerful, suggesting happiness.
However, on the next scene, the room colour changes and is now ‘painted pink […] and bunches of commonflowers’. This time, the room is in Leonardo’s house, and we can therefore associate this colour to him. We also notice the small detail of the ‘common flowers’, suggesting his lower status. Later on, we find, once again, a pink stage, this time in the bride’s changing room. ‘A cross of big pink flowers […] lace curtains and pink ribbons’. Pink relates to passion and love, which are exactly thefeelings that emerge from these two characters, which are immediately connected by this minor detail Lorca has decided to introduce. Pink also reminds us of blood and flesh, which is indeed their final fate.
Leaving aside these associations, as an audience, we can appreciate the darkening tones of the stage lighting. It starts of as yellow, moves to pink, then to night time with an ‘interplay ofgrey, white and cold blues’, ‘dark and silver tones’, ‘everything hard’. The atmosphere in the forest in the last act is required to be ‘gloomy’. But the most visually attractive scene must be the very last one, which is ‘a white room, white stairs, a great arch and wall of the same colour. The floors must also be a dazzling white’, but there are ‘two girls dressed in dark blue, winding a skein ofred wool’. The whole change is perhaps a symbol of the change in the mood of the play, as it gets darker, more dangerous and closer to the ending: death. Yet the very last piece of setting goes further, reminding the audience of a classic Greek tragedy, from which Lorca got some of his inspiration for this play. The two girls could be seen as the chorus of a common Greek performance, holding redwool, symbolic of death and blood. The characters then come in and perform the tragedy that is being unfolded. This aspect ties up perfectly with the rest of the play, overflowing with death and sorrow, giving it a surreal mood.

In addition to this, fate and death help give the play a stronger sense of tragedy.
The theme of fate is seen, especially through the characters of Leonardo and theBride, which face the force of human instinct. The idea portrayed within them is tragic love, or the tragedy of a missed and impossible love. Fate joined them in the past and then tore them apart as a result of the social ideas of the time. However unpleased with this situation, they decide to challenge fate by forcing their way back together. A play based on traditions would of course emphasise...