It is  a play about a girl who has to marry a man that she does not want.
She lives in a small town where people get to know everything about everybody else.

On the day of her marriage she runs away with her former boyfriend.

The play begins with the groom talking to his mother. She is a widow. She lost her husband and a son in a knife fight.

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Son:  Mother.

M : What?

S : I’m off.

M : Where to?

S : To the vineyard (He makes as if to leave)

M : Wait.

S : What is it?

M : Your lunch, my  son..

S : Never mind. I’ll eat grapes. Give me a knife.

M : And why?

S : To cut them

M : (muttering) Knives, knives…Curse them all, and the wretch who invented them…

S : Let’s change the subject.

M : And shotguns, and pistols, and little razors, and even hoes and winnowing hooks.

S : Fine.

M : Whatever can cut through a man’s body, a lovely man, in the flower of his life, who is off to the vines or the olives, because they are his, his family’s….

S : (Lowering his head) You’ve missed the point.

M : …and he doesn’t return. Or if he does return it’s so we can lay a palm leaf or a big plate of salt on him so the body won’t swell. I don’t know how you can carry a knife about you..

S : Are you done yet?

M : No.  Can anyone give me back your father or your brother? And they talk about prison. What is prison? People still eat there, they smoke; they play their instruments! My dead push up the grass, silently turning to dust; two who were like flowers….while the killers, in prison, coolly gazing at the mountains…

S: Do you want me to kill them?

M : No…I don’t like you carrying a knife. …I wish you wouldn’t go to the fields.

S:  (Laughing) Come now!

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Bodas de Sangre

La novia se  casa con un hombre al que no quiere. Es un pueblo pequeño donde  todo se llega a saber. Se dice que en la vida de la novia hay otro hombre.

La madre del novio se entera de que la novia pertenece a la familia de los que asesinaron a su marido.

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The complete play in English is at
Blood Wedding Act I

A. S. Kline © 2007 All Rights Reserved

This work may be freely reproduced, stored, and transmitted, electronically or otherwise, for any non-commercial purpose. Permission to perform this version of the play, on stage or film, by amateur or professional companies, and for commercial purposes, should be requested from the translator.

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