Doa Rosita the spinster - Federico Garca Lorca

In Doa Rosita the Spinster, set in Granada around 1900,Lorca paints a sympathetic picture of a young girl as she waits in vainfor her fianc to return and her hopes of marriage fade. The fate ofRosita, symbolised by the rosa mutabile, which pales from red to pinkto white in the course of a day, appears the more poignant as Lorcacasts a satirical eye at the middle-class society of Granada by whichshe is surrounded.

First performed in 1935, Doa Rositawas greeted as one of Lorca's finest achievements and it remains a classic work of Spanish theatre alongside Lorca's Blood Wedding, The House of Bernarda Alba and Yerma.This Student Edition features parallel English and Spanish texts of theplay, together with a full commentary, questions and a bibliography.

'Doa Rosita is the most accessible and personal of all his plays - a wistful tragic-comedy of unfulfilled love' Guardian

Federico Garca Lorca was born in 1898, in Andalusia, Spain. A poet and dramatist, and also a gifted painter and pianist, his early popular ballads earned him the title of 'poet of the gypsies'. In 1930 he turned his attention to theatre, visiting remote villages and playing classic and new works for peasant audiences. In 1936, shortly after the outbreak of Civil War, he was murdered by Nationalist partisans. His body was never found.

'Lorca at his most Chekhovian'
Daily Telegraph

'Doa Rosita is the most accessible and personal of all his plays - a wistful tragic-comedy of unfulfilled love'
Guardian

'[In] this delicately moving play, about fading beauty and passing time… realism mixes effortlessly with symbolism. Doa Rosita is a touchingly accurate picture of a woman sustained by an illusion. But she also becomes an emblem of Spanish womanhood victimised by men'
Guardian

'A desolate comedy of thwarted love, which … shows Lorca's world in a fresh light'
Evening Standard

'Lyrical and atmospheric…Around this sad, simple story, Lorca weaves a lament for mutability and waste'
Sunday Telegraph