5/11 E-Book

Edward Kemp

• Herausgeber: Nick Hern Books
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

An epic and incendiary thriller about the Gunpowder Plot, weaving together the lives of kings, terrorists, priests and spies. It's 1605, and England is riven between Catholic and Protestant. An aristocratic group of young religious fanatics has recruited a mercenary, Guy Fawkes, to strike at the heart of the English Government. But under the ambivalent rule of the new King, James I, fresh from Scotland, no one can be trusted and their plot is going to be turned against the very people it was meant to save. Edward Kemp's play 5/11 was first performed at Chichester Festival Theatre in 2005.

Leseprobe

Edward Kemp

5/11

NICK HERN BOOKSLondonwww.nickhernbooks.co.uk

Contents

Title Page

Original Production

Introduction

Playing Notes

Epigraph

Characters

5/11

About the Author

Copyright and Performing Rights Information

5/11 was commissioned by and first performed at the Chichester Festival Theatre on 12 August 2005, with the following cast:

CECIL

Hugh Ross

CATESBY

Stephen Noonan

SOUTHWELL

Brendan O’Hea

ARCHBISHOP

Steven Beard

TOPCLIFFE

David Langham

KING JAMES

Alistair McGowan

QUEEN ANE

Annette McLaughlin

LENNOX

Aleksandar Mikic

LADY IN WAITING

Claire Parrish

THOMAS PERCY

Graham Turner

NORTHUMBERLAND

Raad Rawi

TRESHAM

Tom Silburn

MONTEAGLE

John Ramm

BROMLEY

Christian Bradley

ANNE VAUX

Fiona Dunn

MARTHA PERCY

Anna Francolini

EDWARD PERCY

Ollie Porter

HENRY GARNET

Richard O’Callaghan

SUFFOLK

Alexia Healy

WINTER

Mark Meadows

LIZZIE

Kay Curram

ELLESMERE

Brendan O’Hea

SOMERSET

Kieran Hill

JACK WRIGHT

Grant Anthony

KIT WRIGHT

Gary Milner

GUY FAWKES

Daniel Abelson

Director

Steven Pimlott

Designer

Ashley Martin-Davis

Lighting Designer

Chris Ellis

Sound Designer

Matt McKenzie

Composer

Jason Carr

Movement Director

Toby Sedgwick

Introduction

5/11is a fiction based on an event that did not take place.

The absence of an event – the King and Government did not fall victims to a terrorist attack in 1605 – makes this particular cornerstone of English history even shakier than most and means that the Powder Plot (as it was known in its day) has been the subject of almost every imaginable conspiracy theory since, well, Tuesday afternoon, November 5th 1605. The only incontrovertible fact anyone can agree on is that thirteen men and two Jesuit priests were killed or executed in 1606 for their involvement in an alleged conspiracy to blow up the Palace of Westminster the previous year. Everything else is up for grabs.

Whose orders were they acting on? How did they gain access to the Palace? Who supplied the gunpowder? Was there any gunpowder? Each of these questions will lead the researcher into a thicket of speculation, biased narratives and paper trails that break off abruptly. An objective historian needs to acknowledge these unstable foundations; the dramatist requires something he can build on. This account of the last moments of the reign of Queen Elizabeth and the first years of King James is my own, it makes small claim to documentary, nor is it entirely fanciful. I know pretty well what I’ve invented and where I’ve used dramatic licence to conflate or compress action too complicated or prolix to stage. The characters nearly all have at least one foot in historical truth and many quote their historical models. Their actions too are largely based on what one can glean in the cracks between the various shades of bias in the accounts. Where their motivations are ambivalent I have endeavoured to preserve and dramatise this uncertainty.

What interests me as much as the activities of a group of thirteen young men in 1605 are the recurring patterns which may link them to nineteen young men in 2001, or four young men in 2005, or thirteen young men in the early years of the first millennium, or any number of the disillusioned or the dis­possessed who have chosen to use religion to bind themselves together in blood. The very unreasonableness of faith, which can be its great glory in speaking truth to power, has too often made its own assertions of authority particularly barbaric. Christianity’s peculiar success in conquering pain and death, turning defeat in this world into transcendent victory, has led certain strands of the faith into an obsession with these two human absolutes and with martyrdom as the highest witness to God’s presence in the world. The very impervious­ness to suffering that the early Christians showed in the arena before the lions – and which so impressed the Romans that they embraced the religion as their own – is what we now find so frightening in the face of thejihadi.

5/11attempts to dramatise a story of ambivalent motives, of actions and words intentionally or unintentionally obscure, of equivocation, interpretation and misinterpretation, of the impact of faith on pain and charisma upon authority, played out in a country trying to find an identity for itself in a world where the border between religion and the state is being redrawn.

I am grateful to Chichester Festival Theatre for commissioning this play when it was little more than a title, to Steven Pimlott for his insight and guidance during the writing of it and the expertise and bravura he has brought to the staging, to an indomitable company of actors, many of whom accepted parts which were barely sketched, and to my family who have endured my obsession.

Edward Kemp Chichester, July 2005

Playing Notes

Scene and act divisions are, to an extent, arbitrary. The play should run almost seamlessly in two halves, allowing maximum collision and interplay between its many facets. It is neither wholly in earnest nor entirely playful. Its language is predominantly modern – though laced with many different Englishes – whether its staging should also be modern I do not know. It can be played by any number of actors, but ideally at least thirteen.

An oblique slash (/) indicates the point of entry of the next speaker. The absence of a full stop indicates either that the next speaker interrupts or, if there is no capital letter beginning the next speech, that there is a continuous flow of thought amongst speakers. Italicised Latin text is intended to be sung.

The Burning Babe

Robert Southwell

As I in hoary winter’s night stoodshivering in the snow, Surprised I was with sudden heat which made my heart to glow; And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near, A pretty babe all burning bright did in the air appear; Who, scorched with excessive heat, such floods of tears did shed As though his floods should quench his flames which with his   tears were fed. ‘Alas,’ quoth he, ‘but newly born in fiery heats I fry, Yet none approach to warm their hearts or feel my fire but I! My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns, Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns; The fuel justice layeth on, and mercy blows the coals, The metal in this furnace wrought are men’s defiled souls, For which, as now on fire I am to work them to their good, So will I melt into a bath to wash them in my blood.’ With this he vanished out of sight and swiftly shrunk away, And straight I called unto mind that it was Christmas Day.

fromSt Peter’s Complaint, 1595

Characters

JAMES,King of Scotland, then Britain ANE,his wife ARCHBISHOPof Canterbury(‘Lol’) Earl of NORTHUMBERLAND (‘Harry Earl of LENNOX (‘Es Baron ELLESMERE,Lord Treasurer Lord SOMERSET,Lord Admiral Sir Robert CECIL,Secretary to the Privy Council Sir Richard TOPCLIFFE,Chief Justice Dicky Katherine SUFFOLK,a lady of the English court BROMLEY,a Pursuivant William MONTEAGLE LIZZIE Monteagle,his wife Francis TRESHAM,her brother Robert CATESBY,his cousin Thomas WINTER,his cousin ANNE VAUX,their cousin and Garnet’s companion Thomas PERCY,Northumberland’s cousin MARTHA Percy,his wife EDWARD Percy,his son JACK Wright KIT Wright,his brother Henry GARNET,Jesuit Superior in England Robert SOUTHWELL,a Jesuit priest Guy FAWKES,Ensign in the Spanish army PURSUIVANTS,aPAGEANT MASTER, MEMBERS OF THE PRIVY COUNCIL, CONSPIRATORS, HUNTING PACKS,and others

ACT ONE

Scene One

Darkness.

The rasp of a breath – in – out.

A bed. Upon it a body – little more than bones in an orange wig. Squatting at the bed’s edge, a hunch-backed figure:ROBERT CECIL.He is always watching. Now he addresses us.

CECIL. In truth the King never dies. The King is dead, the cry goes up – Long live the King. Continuity – Tradition – The line unbroken to the crack of doom – English things.

As he continues to speak,CATESBY,dressed in red(as he always will be)emerges bearing a bundle, which is a child in his arms. He lays it on the ground.

In truth of course kings do die – some childless – and in the days of their passing, the hours grow thick – shadows walk – and hope is reckless.

CATESBYsets light to the bundle. It burns with instant ferocity and at once the space is crowded. At the centre of the crowd a pale young man in a white shift stands on a cart. There are knives amongst the onlookers and burning braziers. The pale young man speaks. The crowd is volatile.

SOUTHWELL. I am come to perform the last act of this miserable life. Almighty God, pardon and forgive me all my sins – as You are my witness, I never intended any evil against Her Majesty

ARCHBISHOP. Do you deny you are a priest of Rome?

SOUTHWELL. No – but I am no enemy to the Queen.

ARCHBISHOP. Do you acknowledge her as your lawful prince?

SOUTHWELL. I do.

ARCHBISHOP. You did not say this at your trial

SOUTHWELL. because you did not seek a priest or a traitor – only blood – and you shall have it – freely as my mother gave it to me – and if it’s not enough, there will come as many more as willing as myself.

TOPCLIFFE. If the King of Spain or the Pope entered this land by force, intending to establish the religion you claim to be the true Catholic faith – would you resist them?

SOUTHWELL. I am a priest – I may not fight.

ARCHBISHOP. Would you counsel others to defend Her Majesty?

SOUTHWELL. I would counsel all men to maintain the right of their prince.

TOPCLIFFE. And has the Queen no right to maintain our religion and to forbid yours?

SOUTHWELL. No – she does not.

ARCHBISHOP. So if the Pope came to establish your religion you would not defend the Queen against him? I charge you before this assembly and before God.

SOUTHWELL. I am a Catholic priest, your Grace – I would never fight – nor counsel others to fight against my religion – O Christ, I will never deny you for a thousand lives.