The Wedding (1901 Play)

The Wedding (1901 Play)

The Wedding (Polish: Wesele) is a defining work of Polish drama written at the turn of the 20th century by Stanisław Wyspiański. It describes the perils of the national drive toward self-determination following the two unsuccessful uprisings against the Partitions of Poland, in November 1830 and January 1863. The plot is set at the wedding of a member of Kraków intelligentsia (the Bridegroom), and his peasant Bride. Their class-blurring union follows a fashionable trend among friends of the playwright from the modernist Young Poland movement.

Wyspiański's play was based on a real-life event: the wedding of his contemporary, Lucjan Rydel at St. Mary's Basilica in Kraków, followed by the wedding reception in the village of Bronowice. It was inspired in part also by the modernist painting of Jacek Malczewski and Maksymilian Gierymski.