Dona Rosita the Spinster

Lorca's moving play about fading beauty and thwarted love.

Spain's most celebrated dramatist, Federico Garcia Lorca was murdered by Nationalist sympathisers at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. In Do a Rosita the Spinster, set in Granada around 1900, he paints a sympathetic picture of a young girl as she waits in vain for her fiance to return and her hopes of marriage fade. The fate of Rosita, symbolised by the rosa mutabile, which pales from red to pink to white in the course of a day, appears the more poignant as Lorca casts a satirical eye at the middle-class society of Granada by which she is surrounded. This Student Edition features parallel English and Spanish texts of the play, together with a full introduction and commentary considering the plot, context, themes, characters, language and staging of the play. Questions on the play and a bibliography further enhance this edition for teachers and students