On her wedding day the bride takes her ex-fiancé Leonardo and escapes with him to the forest. The bridegroom's mother sends her son to chase after them and prove his manhood. The chase after them into the forest endangers his life.

The play begins with a mother giving her son a knife. It is a look at a society in which death is a unifying, comforting and calming factor. In such a society bereaved women have great power. They have exclusive hold on bereavement: the more a woman has lost the greater her power in society. The women preserve the state of war, they are willing to sacrifice the men, but they will never be killed for this war. It is an indictment of a society where a good mother is a mother who sacrifices her son. A society where the individual who wishes to cling to life is perceived as threatening.