III - The Sacrifice of Identity in Amor de Don Perlimplín con Belisa en su jardín

Summary

Perlimplín: at the heart of García Lorca's theatre

Margarita Ucelay has characterised Amor de Don Perlimplín con Belisa en su jardín as ‘[un] escalón de acceso al mundo de sus comedias imposibles’. Meanwhile, Luis Fernández Cifuentes asserts that Amor de Don Perlimplín distinguishes itself by initiating one of two divergent paths in García Lorca's theatre, marking off the ‘irrepresentable’ from the ‘convencional’. Similarly, Enric Bou, summarising the critical interpretation of the play, points to the key position of Amor de Don Perlimplín in the poet's canon: ‘parece cerrar un ciclo de lo folclórico y abre las puertas … a un teatro de ideas y poético’. Such claims for the central importance of the piece challenge the sidelining of Amor de Don Perlimplín as a lesser work of García Lorca, and question its being passed over in favour of the more substantial, ‘heavyweight’ dramas. And yet the drama remains a most neglected example of García Lorca's theatre.

In an interview from 1935, the poet confessed: ‘si me pregunta usted qué obra mía me gusta más, le diré que es una obra pequeña que por su lirismo verdadero ninguna compañía profesional se atreve a poner y que se llamaAmor de Don Perlimplín con Belisa en su jardín’. This is one of the very few references García Lorca made to the piece, and so despite the fact that he highlights Amor de Don Perlimplín as his favourite work, the poet himself may have promoted the play's marginalisation. The drama is also the most under-performed of Lorca's major works, no doubt contributing to the lesser profile of Amor de Don Perlimplín and its undeserved minor status. Certainly, over the last seventy years the play has attracted few companies to mount a production. The false start the play received in 1929 when its première was cancelled in unfortunate circumstances, and the subsequent four-year hiatus before a revival was attempted, could be viewed as a discouraging heritage on which to attempt new productions. Margarita Ucelay suggests that the play, at least in its earlier years, would have posed considerable difficulties for a professional company.