A Sunny Morning (play) Summary

 

  A Sunny Morning by the Quintero brothers is a refreshingly new romantic comedy. It tells the story of Don Gonzalo and Dona Laura, who were ardent lovers at their young age. But their affair was not a successful one as they had to part with each other in life. They meet each other in a park in Madrid during their old age. The story is presented in a new pattern unlike the conventional romantic stories.

                              The play begins on a sunny morning in a park in Madrid. An old woman, named Dona Laura enters the scene and she is described by the authors as "a handsome, white-haired old lady of about seventy, refined in appearance." She leans upon the arms of her maid Petra. At the first reference itself the old lady is described quite differently as 'handsome' which is a word usually associated with men. The woman is happy about feeding pigeons with bread crumbs.

                  It is at that point an old man enters with his attendant. The old man is none other than Don Gonzalo, who is seen to be quite irritated as he finds no bench in the park to be vacant. Moreover the one that he usually uses during his visit to the park is occupied by three priests. Quite grudgingly he comes near Laura and shares her bench. Laura gets infuriated as the old man has tried to scare the pigeons and she calls him "an ill-natured man." But after a few moments of disagreement, both of them have a pinch of snuff and reconciles with each other. Gonzalo says that he is from Valencia and to his surprise Laura reveals that she is from Maricela, where she lived in a villa. Gonzalo is startled by the revelation and he says that he knows a woman named Laura Liorente who lived in a villa there, who was perhaps the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Both Laura and Gonzalo realise that they were young lovers once. But they pretend not to reveal their identities.

                        Laura and Gonzalo devise stories of their own deaths. The old Laura says that she knows the woman named Laura, known as ‘The Silver Maiden' and that she was her friend during her young age. She also lies that she knows the tragic story of her love affair with a gallant young man named Gonzalo. The old Gonzalo says that he is the cousin of the young man. According to him the young Gonzalo had to leave his place as he was involved in a fight with a merchant, the suitor of Laura. Then he joined the army and went to Africa where he met with a glorious death. The old woman reveals that without finding her lover the young beautiful Laura committed suicide. Both realise that they are lying but pretend to be unaware. 
         The play ends with a promise that they will meet the very next day with a feeling of harmony. The authors Serafin and Jaoquin Alvarez Quintero have succeed in presenting a story which is quite free from stereotypical depictions.