Does this my hair not tell the tale?...

Does this my hair not tell the tale?

Can you not see these scars,

these signs of savage blows, this blood?

And are you men of honour?

Are you my father and my kin?

Are you so cold, so cruel

your very souls aren’t torn apart

to see such suffering?

But no, your town is aptly named,

and you’re not men, but sheep!

Let me be armed for battle, then,

if you’re so hard of heart,

such stocks and stones, such tigresses . . .

no, worse than tigresses . . .

for they, when hunters steal their young

ferociously pursue

and slay them, till they reach the sea

and plunge beneath its waves.

Not tigresses, but timid hares,

not Spaniards, but barbarians,

too chicken-hearted to deny

your women to other men!

Why not wear distaffs at your waists?

Why gird on useless swords?

I swear to God we women alone

shall make those tyrants pay

for our indignities, and bill

those traitors for our blood.

And you, you effete effeminates,

I sentence to be stoned

as spinsters, pansies, queens and cowards,

and forced henceforth to wear

our bonnets and our overskirts,

with painted, powdered faces.

Our valorous Commander means

to have Frondoso hanged

—uncharged, untried and uncondemned—

from yonder battlements.

He’ll serve all you unmanly men

the same, and I’ll rejoice;

for when this honourable town

is womanless, that age

shall dawn which once amazed the world,

the age of Amazons.

Vega, Lope de. 1989. Fuente Ovejuna, ed. and trans. Victor Dixon. 169-171.