Yerma

Drama Classics: The World's Great Plays at a Great Little Price

The tale of an impassioned, childless woman living with her husband in rural Spain. Tortured by her incessant longing to conceive a child, Yerma is driven by madness to commit a heinous crime.

Federico García Lorca's play Yerma was first performed in 1934.

This English translation by Jo Clifford is published in the Nick Hern Books Drama Classics series. The edition also includes an introduction by Jo Clifford, a chronology and suggestions for further reading.



Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca, known as Federico García Lorca (5 June 1898 – 19 August 1936) was a Spanish poet, playwright, and theatre director.

Lorca achieved international recognition as an emblematic member of the Generation of '27. His major plays include Blood Wedding, Yerma and The House of Bernarda Alba

He was executed by Nationalist forces during the Spanish Civil War.

Jo Clifford (formerly known as John Clifford) is an award-winning playwright, translator, poet and performer, who has also worked as a journalist and academic. She was instrumental in establishing the reputation of the Traverse Theatre Company in the 1980s.

She is the author of about eighty plays, many of which have been performed all over the world. They include: Losing Venice, Every One, Faust and The Tree of Knowledge. Her adaptation of Charles Dickens's Great Expectations makes her the first openly transgendered woman playwright to have had a play on in London's West End.