Doña Rosita the Spinster differs in several important respects from Blood Wedding. Firstly, the characters are mainly middle class, and secondly its mood is, in the first two acts, much more comic. As far as the translation is concerned, the dialogue should suggest, in contrast to Blood Wedding, the greater sophistication of the characters, and it is therefore, in general, less stark and austere. In addition, reflecting the comic moments of the play, it is less taut, and there are many instances where the lightness of Lorca’s touch and the swift interplay of the characters’ exchanges is strongly reminiscent of his earlier farces.
On the other hand, as in Chekhov, this play has perceptible undercurrents of sadness which, by Act Three, rise strongly to the surface. In the dialogue of Rosita and the Aunt, in particular, the mood is once more that of Blood Wedding and Yerma, and the translation must therefore reflect this movement into a different key.
For the translator the most difficult and challenging aspect of the play is, however, its poetry, which ranges from the deeply touching poem on the rose to the strongly sentimental exchanges between Rosita and her cousin (end of Act One), and the sprightly and largely comic song sung by Rosita and the spinsters in Act Two. In the first and last of the three, Lorca used assonance, in the second a strict rhyme-form. In translating the poetry I have not attempted to follow Lorca in matters of either assonance or rhyme (given the fact that rhymes are easier to find in Spanish), but rather to capture the tone and mood of his extremely beautiful – and sometimes humorous – poems and songs.