|
The Fire of Love
 Writing my play ‘The Fire of Love’:
I first met Kings Lynn’s medieval Christian visionary Margery Kempe when I was an undergraduate. 50 years later I still don’t feel that I know her well
Being scarcely literate, she had to dictate her Book, and it’s the first known autobiography in English. A manuscript copy was found in 1934 and published both in Margery’s Norfolky Middle English and in modern translations
My own translation appeared in 1995, and the way it was marketed showed conflicting views of Margery’s life and character. The UK edition bore a pious artwork on its front cover; the US edition sported raspberry-coloured vulgarity, attracting the hurried hands of travellers at airports and railway stations. (It sold five times better than the UK edition)
As if by way of compromise, the cover of the latest edition, published by Gracewing, shows drunken pilgrims in muted colours!
Margery often seems unaware of her effect on others. On the outskirts of Lynn, she encounters half a dozen nursing mothers and asks them the sex of their babies. Knowing that baby boys set her screaming in honour of the infant Christ the mothers preserve the peace by professing that all are girls! In other incidents, far from Lynn, her fellow pilgrims set off without her, evidently wanting relief from her religious injunctions. Saintly or sanctimonious, Margery stuck to her noisy ways
I started my play 30 years ago as the task of translation came to an end, and Margery speaks in the play with even less inhibition than she does in the Book. Most powerful, though, is the wrapt intensity of her visions. Thus when the first act climaxes in midwife Margery delivering Christ and the second in her presence at the crucifixion we see and hear the total unquestioning involvement of her whole being. No birthing mother or crucified Christ appears onstage, so the power of her conviction must make them as real for the audience as they are for her
The final act features Margery’s trial for blasphemy, turning especially on her claim to intimate relations with God. Set against this enormity is the poignancy of Margery’s dependence, for defence, on her senile husband, John, with his proneness to embarrassing spoonerisms
Their married love emerges at many points in the Book and in my play is most keenly felt when the two are taken from the courtroom in different directions, John pathetically calling out, ‘You ain’t going to hang my wife on no giblet. I won’t get no more dumplin’s like hers’
The play leaves the audience to reach their own verdict. Speaking for myself, I have to say that there’s hardly a single aspect of Margery Kempe on which I’ve made up my mind. Perhaps that’s what sustained my creative engagement with her for 50 years!
Now Wells Community Theatre Society is bringing my ideas to life, adding ideas and music all their own! I’d be delighted to hear from other groups who’d like to present The Fire of Love, especially if they can do so in places associated with Margery Kempe, such as Kings Lynn, Walsingham, Norwich, and Great Yarmouth
Tony D Triggs top.note@yahoo.co.uk
Do you have a news story about yourself, church, or organisation; or forthcoming event relating to Christians or a church in Great Yarmouth or surrounding district?
If so, email office@networkyarmouth.co.uk with details and, if possible, a suitable picture(s)
|
|
|
|
