n, led by Laurencia; invoking the names of Ferdinand and Isabella, the villagers kill the Commander. Flores, the Commander's deputy, appeals to King Ferdinand for justice. At the trial, however, all the villagers, under torture, insist that "Fuente Ovejuna did the deed" (III.13). Later, in audience with Ferdinand, Esteban explains that the Commander's death was mere justice and in the name of the village swears loyalty to the Spanish crown.
The historical background of Fuente Ovejuna is an important part of its plot because it is crucial to a modern understanding of the themes that emerge in the play. The social and political position of character groups is fundamental to an understanding of the emotional impact of the play. There are three principal groups of note in the play: the peasantry, the royal court of Ferdinand and Isabella, and the provincial Iberian nobility, represented by the Commander. The interplay of royalty, nobility, and peasantry informs the conflict between individual characters. Virtually all critics cite the central feature of the action as the fact that the village, Fuente Ovejuna, becomes the hero of the play because the villagers as an unshakably unified group take responsibility for killing the Commander. No less significant is that the villagers achieve dramatic stature that, in drama of the various classical periods, is usually reserved for heroes of noble birth. Colford notes "a kind of collective honor which Lope cleverly couples with patriotic loyalty to the Catholic Monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella" (Colford xv). Gassner, similarly, observes, "In Fuente Ovejuna, Lope has also performed the feat and a modern one it is of creating a 'collective hero' by treating the village of Fuente Ovejuna as the protagonist of the play" (Gassner 362).
Fuente Ovejuna has been read as a play of revolutionary tenor, symbolized by the uprising of the villagers against the tyranny of the ruling state. In th...