The final act of this play, like the rest of the work, is largely symbolic. Commentary on the developing events is given by three Woodcutters who speak to each other about the events much as a Greek chorus would speak to the audience about Oedipus and his moral frailty.
The action of the plot is plain enough since the Bride and Leonardo have run off together into the forest—soon to be visited by the avenging Groom and the Moon, who is “a young woodcutter in whiteface.” So, the commentary is doubly intensified since the moon is both chorus (woodcutter) and free agent, almost godlike. The moon is both beautiful and sinister in tone—poetic and bloodthirsty, allowing nothing to remain secret. The question which remains for me is about the bride and Leonardo. Is their relationship and the development of their fanciful semi-elopement (fanciful since he is already married) about their love or about the loveless-ness of both his marriage and of her immanent marriage? Or could it about the constraints of the both unions in a society which does not promote personal freedom of expression--a signal of actual liberty and freedom? Put another way, is Blood Wedding about a particular ethnic group/culture or is it about more universal human characteristics including the identity of women and men at their most elemental level? Is this play exploring the psychology of humanity including masculine and feminine roles or is it exploring the place the awful constraints of a particular group in time and geography which does not recognize the bondage of men and women to unproductive and unsatisfying roles? And who is guilty in this?
Search for guilt and punishment for wrong-doing (for example, in tracking down and punishing who has run off with someone else while married) is clearly a driving force in this act but I think that Lorca is also suggesting that the atmosphere of adult relationships is fraught with a climate of suspicion making the blood spilled in this act inevitable. Leonardo says to his stolen bride, “Let’s find a corner of darkness/Where I will love you always,/And I won’t care about people/Or the poison that they spread.” In many ways this play is not about the crazy behavior of Leonardo and the mixed-up Bride but is about the tragedy of gossip and social constraints which prevent the full development of mankind. Leonardo and the Bride selfishly indulge in their infatuation—thereby rocking society. But a larger question can be asked. The knife which kills both Leonardo and the Groom, penetrating “ . . . so coldly/Through the astonished flesh” is a universal knife of sorrow which enters the body and stops “exactly at the place/Where, trembling and entangled,/Lies the dark root of the scream.” Is this play a poetic but modern statement of existentialist philosophy—what this scream might stand for? Its tone, content and linguistic expression are serious, never frivolous, not really familiar and cozy. The poetry is what makes this not merely melodramatic and this larger and underlying theme of life as tragic lifts it above and beyond the mere circumstances of a jilted and wronged Groom and wronged wife.
