Importance of First Woodcutter

Like the young girls in the play, the Woodcutters function like a chorus, that is, characters who are peripheral to the main action but who comment on it. The woodcutters are appropriate characters with which to open the last act of the play. As men who cut down living trees, they foreshadow the deaths of the two young men. The First Woodcutter, like the Second Woodcutter, seems to sympathize with the lovers' passion and transgression. "You have to follow the path of your blood," he says of the lovers' rebellion.