‘A Sunny Morning’ is a short, one-act play by Serafin and Joaquin Alvarez Quintero, two renowned Spanish dramatists. It is a romantic comedy which presents the story of Don Gonzalo and Dona Laura who, loved each other in their youth but were forced to separate in life.
On a sunny autumn morning in a quiet corner of a park in Madrid, Dona Laura, a handsome, white-haired lady of about seventy, refined in appearance, is feeding pigeons in the park. Don Gonzalo, a gentleman of seventy, gouty and impatient, enters. Their servants Petra, Dona Laura’* maid, and Juanito come and go nearby.
The conversation between the two seventy-year-olds begins sarcastically, with each accusing the other of encroaching on their private space. Don Gonzalo complains the priests have taken his bench and says Dona Laura is a “Senile old lady! She ought to be at home knitting and counting her beads.” She finds him “an illnatured old man!” He resigns himself to “sit on the bench with the old lady.”
A pinch of snuff helps to clear their heads, and they find something in common with alternating sneezes of three times each. Dona Laura confides to the audience, “the snuff has made peace between us.”
They begin to banter back and forth in a more friendly manner. Then Don Gonzalo reads out loud from a book of poems. As they converse, 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 Llorente who lived in a villa there, who was perhaps the most beautiful he had ever seen. Both Laura and Gonzalo realise each other to be former lovers. But they pretend not to reveal their identities.
In her youthful days, Dona Laura was known in her locality as ‘The Silver Maiden’. She was fair as the lily, with jet hair and eyes. She was like a dream. She was in love with Gonzalo, the gallant lover. He used to pass by on horseback every morning through the rose garden and toss up a bouquet of flowers to her balcony which she caught On his way back in the afternoon she would toss the flowers back to him. But Laura’ parents wanted to marry her to a merchant whom she disliked. One day there was a quarrel between Gonzalo and the merchant, the suitor. After the duel the young man fled from his hometown to Seville and then to Madrid, being scared of the consequences of a duel with a person highly regarded in that locality. Even though he tried to communicate with Laura through letters, all attempts ****.
Now Laura and Gonzalo devise stories of their own deaths. 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 with a merchant, the suitor of Laura. Then he joined the army and went to where he met with a glorious . 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 that she knows the tragic story of her love affair with a gallant young man named Gonzalo. The old woman reveals that not finding her lover, the young and beautiful Laura committed ***.
But, in reality, after three months Gonzalo ran *** to Paris with a ballet dancer and Laura, on the other hand, got married after two years. Both realise that they are lying but pretend to be unaware. When the play ends, they agree to meet at the park again, still not acknowledging what they both know to be true.
