I. Acto primero
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A verse play of village revolt for B2
Fuenteovejuna Fuenteovejuna
Lope de Vega
This is Lope de Vega’s complete play in the original verse, first published in 1619, not an adaptation. In the catalog it is B2: about 13,300 words, 11 words per sentence on average, in 3 acts. The text opens with the list of characters, and the lines are short, so the difficulty is the old language of the verse more than long sentences. The catalog also has a MovaReader prose retelling of the same play at B1.
- B2
- 13 310 words
- 2-4 hours
Will this text hold?
B1
Earlier
At B1 the verse will slow you down: inverted word order, old forms such as agora and plega, and rural words like alcahuete or jubón need a translation. The MovaReader retelling in prose, at B1, is the easier way in.
B1B2
This text
At B2 you can follow the story: the lines are short and the speakers change often, so you meet few long sentences. Expect to translate single old words and to reread some speeches.
Check this passageC1
With room to spare
At C1 the play reads steadily; what remains is the density of Golden Age images and the formal speeches of the master, the commander and the king.
Start readingThe average sentence has 11 words, shorter than in most complete B2 texts, because the play is written in short verse lines. But one word in fourteen has 9 letters or more (7.3%), more than in La vida es sueño (5.1%), El burlador de Sevilla (5.2%) or El condenado por desconfiado (4.5%), the other Golden Age plays in the catalog; they also sit at B2, with sentences of 11, 7 and 7 words. The difficulty here is the verse and the vocabulary: inverted word order, old forms such as agora and plega, and the language of a feudal village (comendador, regidor, alcaide). Act I averages about 14 words per sentence, acts II and III 10 to 11. Hence B2. This is the catalog’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 13 310
- words
- 11
- words in an average sentence
- 2-4
- hours of reading
Wikisource. Wikisource
What it is about, without the ending
Castile in the 1470s, during the war of the Catholic Monarchs. Fernán Gómez de Guzmán, commander of the Order of Calatrava, rules the village of Fuenteovejuna by force and takes what he wants from its people. Laurencia, the daughter of the mayor Esteban, refuses him, and Frondoso, the villager who loves her, stands up to him with a crossbow. The commander looks for revenge, Mengo pays for speaking up, and the villagers, who start by grumbling in the square, have to decide how far they will go. How the story ends, and what the king and queen decide, is not revealed here.
Compare two places
Fuenteovejuna
II. Acto segundo
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Choose an underlined word.
An old verb and a proverb
Plega is an old subjunctive of placer, so ¡Plega al cielo que jamás le vea! means “may heaven grant that I never see him”. Anda ya; que nadie diga: de esta agua no beberé is a proverb (“never say you will not drink this water”): Pascuala warns Laurencia that she may yet fall for the commander, and Laurencia swears she will not. The question about the encina tan seca, an oak as dry as her nature, is Laurencia’s way of saying she is hard to soften.
Read to the punctuation
Here one sentence often runs across several lines. Mengo’s Hanme contado que Frondoso, aquí en el prado, para librarte, Laurencia, le puso al pecho una jara takes four lines and means “they told me that Frondoso, here in the meadow, to free you, Laurencia, put a crossbow bolt to his chest”. Read to the punctuation, not to the end of the line. Hanme contado is me han contado with the pronoun after the verb, as the verse puts it, and le refers to the commander.
Chapters
Translation while you read
The book stays free on every plan. Reader, €1 a month, removes the daily limit on words and sentences.
Reader
€1 a month
Laurencia’s curse “¡Plega al cielo que jamás le vea en Fuenteovejuna!” (“May heaven grant that I never see him in Fuenteovejuna!”) uses the old verb plega, so translating the whole sentence in Reader shows the sense at once.
ReaderIf this book is not the one
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Before you read
Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
It is the original, not a learner’s abridgement: Lope de Vega’s complete play in verse, all three acts with the list of characters, first published in 1619. The text comes from Spanish Wikisource, which does not name the printed edition it follows. The catalog also has a separate MovaReader prose retelling of the play at B1.
Is there an audiobook?
Fuenteovejuna has no audiobook on MovaReader: the play is read on screen. The translation appears when you tap a word, and you will need it most for old or rural words such as alcahuete, jubón or descalabradas.
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes, with the Reader plan. In this play it helps most where one sentence runs over several verse lines, for example Laurencia’s “¡Plega al cielo que jamás le vea en Fuenteovejuna!”. Without the plan, single words are translated up to the daily limit.
How many hours does it take?
The whole play takes about 2-4 hours: the pace of someone reading with translation of new words, slower than a native speaker’s. Each of the three acts is about 4,400 words, so one act makes an evening.
Where does the text get easier?
It is fairly even. Act I is the densest, about 14 words per sentence, partly because the list of characters and the long speeches of the master and the commander open it; acts II and III run at 10 to 11 words per sentence, with quicker exchanges. The verse and the old words stay throughout.
Will my place in the book be saved?
Yes. Once you sign in, the reader keeps your last place and the words you opened, so you can return to the play where you left off. Each of the three acts also opens from the contents on this page.