Dona Rosita the Spinster

In Doña Rosita the Spinster, set in Granada around 1900, Lorca paints a sympathetic picture of a young girl as she waits in vain for her fiancé 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. First performed in 1935, Doña Rosita was 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 the play, together with a full commentary, questions and a bibliography. 'Doña Rosita is the most accessible and personal of all his plays - a wistful tragic-comedy of unfulfilled love' Guardian