As he wrote La casa de Bernarda Alba, Federico Garcia Lorca explained: "drama is poetry that escapes the
book and becomes human. And as it is being made it talks and shouts, cries and despairs". Lorca saw in theatre
the most perfect means to reach people's souls, more immediate and effective than poetry, and he kindled this possibility
even amidst difficult times. Lorca is, mainly, a poet, and as so his plays possess great visual as well as linguistic
virtue. The last of the rural tragedies -Bernarda Alba was preceded by Bodas de sangre (1933) and Yerma (1934)-
was finished in June 1936. It was meant to open in Buenos Aires in October, played by the Margarita Xirgu company,
but Lorca was murdered in July. War events postponed the opening until 1945, but in Spain the play would stay banned
until 1964. The plot is deceivingly simple: Bernarda Alba exerts a tyrant control upon her daughters, who live
as prisoners within her house walls. The conflict is deprivation of freedom, blown up to tragic proportions by
the death of Bernarda Alba's second husband and her decision to impose eight years of strict mourning. But this
mourning goes far beyond the usual black clothing: during the following eight years no one will leave the house,
and no man will enter. The reclusion is the results of them being women of a certain social position. The authority/freedom
conflict is visible through the submission of the feminine condition -the subtitle Drama of women in the towns
of Spain highlights this-. Freedom is stifled by the prejudices of a social class enslaved by appearance and tortured
afraid by gossip. Lorca's theatrical experience is highly noticeable in his way of highlighting the conflict without
superfluous details: lighting, costumes, text and language, and the actresses' movements, everything is measured
to the last millimeter. And the closing words of the main character become a remarkable premonition of what would
shroud Spain during many following years. "And I do not want sobbing. Death must be stared in her face".
"¡Silence, silence I have said! ¡Silence! Professor Borja Rodriguez-Gutierrez adds to this edition
a clear introductory essay that dismantles Garcia Lorca's clockwork mechanism, while introducing annotations that
allow the reader to fully grasp the meaning of this influential cornerstone of Hispanic letters.