A review of Written on the heart by David Edgar

A Review of Written on the Heart by David Edgar

Lyudmila Yegorova

Vologda State University

... the main thing we did was not to praise but to demystify the 1611 text, the job the RSC likes to do to Shakespeare.

David Edgar. Afterword

T. S. Eliot in his essay on Lancelot Andrewes (1555-1626) let us feel a saintly intellectual aura of the Right Reverend Father in God - 'one of the community of the born spiritual'. While juxtaposing his personality and preaching with John Donne's, Eliot revealed that to him Donne was 'a little of the religious spellbinder, the Reverend Billy Sunday of his time, the flesh-creeper, the sorcerer of emotional orgy'. Lancelot Andrewes was 'more medieval, because he is more pure, and because his bond was with the Church, with tradition'.

David Edgar strikes a different chord. In his play, Andrewes is less medieval, not to say absolutely preoccupied with reform. He is less pure, more assailable, because his bond with the Church is presented as much more complicated. The Church and tradition in his times were going through radical transformations. The policy was changing so rapidly that it was impossible to stay away from politics - to stay pure. It was of vital importance whether you were inclined to preserve your Catholicism, turn Protestant, strive to become Anglican (where was that blessed via media?).

T. S. Eliot pointed out that Lancelot Andrewes's 'intellect was satisfied by theology and his sensibility by prayer and liturgy'. But could the divine afford staying 'alone with the Alone'? The Prologue of the play gives us immediate feeling of little probability of enjoying contemplation for some time not to mention the proverbial five hours spent by Andrewes daily in prayer. Pressing business of the church or the state was expecting you, people were waiting - you could not but interrupt your devotions to face the problems.

Harmony of Lancelot Andrewes's intellect and sensibility fascinated T. S. Eliot. To 'those who would prove this harmony' he recommended examining Andrewes's Preces Privatae and his sermons. I was highly impressed by both formats of devotion and in general by his wit, learning, multilingualism (he knew fifteen modern languages, six ancient), his thorough and meticulous approach, holiness and wisdom. In the play,

Lancelot is rather burdened with guilt than harmonious and saintly.

The play is highly dynamic. We move in time from 1610 (when the translation of the King James Bible was nearing completion), to 1536 (Tyndale was imprisoned in Flanders), to Elizabethan times (stained-glass windows were being smashed and images of the saints struck out), and return to 1610.

Scene One involves us in the next but final moments of revision of the translation of the King James Bible (1604-1611). In January 1604, there was a conference on ecclesiastic problems in Hampton Court. King James, who ascended to the throne not long before that, participated in it and agreed to the proposal by John Rainolds (the Puritan leader and President of Corpus Christi College, Oxford) to work out a new biblical translation.

The work was entrusted to six committees. Fifty-four theologians were to refer to the Tyndale's Bible, Matthew's, Coverdale's, the Great Bible, Geneva, Bishops' and to produce an improved revision rather than a new translation ('to make a good one better').

A further review took place at Stationers' Hall in London. Each company contributed two representatives to the meeting.

Taking the knowledge of the history for granted, David Edgar in Scene One visualizes the lobby of the Ely House. The eminent theologians begin to arrive to hear Lancelot Andrewes's adjudication of the few remaining matters of controversy and to make final decisions. They are all aware that there are verses whose translation is yet to be agreed, but none of them feels the needfulness of the assembly. As John Overall, Dean of St Paul's, says:

...we are gathered, or you might say, rather - dragged here, while our greater duties fall into neglect. The king's treasure is bare, the Spanish match is in contention, and both superstition - seemingly - and separatism -manifestly - stalk the land. While we adjudicate between 'acknowledge' and 'confess', weigh 'heal' and 'save', and distinguish - if distinction may be drawn - between 'very pleasant' and 'delectable'.

In 1604 Richard Bancroft, the Archbishop of Canterbury, drew up Translation Rules (15 articles) to minimize the risk of producing a Bible that might give added credibility either to Puritanism, Presbyterianism, or Roman Catholicism. The Third Rule stated that the old ecclesiastical words were to be kept, viz. the word church not to be translated congregation & c.

Six years passed and the problem of choice (church v. congregation, priest v. elder, penance v. repentance, charity v. love, grace v. favour, idol v. image, fold v. flock & c.) expected its final solution. How to minimize the danger 'of both papistical and puritan excess'? All of the gathered in the hall had differing points of view: 'Some said reform should go further. Some said it had gone far enough'. For John Overall, Dean of St Paul's, 'the reform has gone too far'. For George Abbot, Bishop of London, 'thus far but no further'. For Samuel Ward, scholar, 'not far enough'. What would Lancelot Andrewes say? Would he manage to think not of what each of his colleagues might wish the words to mean, but of the initial meaning of the words in Hebrew and in Greek? What would the final verdict and its consequences be?

Scene Two visualizes the last night of William Tyndlale (in the morning 6 October 1536 at the age of 41 he was executed as a heretic), his meeting with a young priest who managed to save his papers - the translation of some of the Old Testament done there, in prison. We would see the young priest in fifty years changed into Archdeacon. He would cherish his memories of Tyndale - "without whose teaching I would be ... not the man I am".

A great majority of the English people could repeat those words. The impact of Tyndale and his translation is impossible to overestimate. I mean even not the colossal percentage of borrowing of the King James Version from Tyndale (over 80% in New Testament) but the fact that many used his New Testament to learn to read, to learn about the Christian faith. In the play, we see Mary Currer, the Bishop's servant, an eloquent example of such a case. She read two books (The Tyndale's Bible and The Book of Martyrs) and they made her a staunch Protestant. When she heard the vernacular Tyndale Bible with which she learned to read was about to be replaced she did not have the slightest doubt that the Book should remain in common English.

In King Henry's time, of blessed memory, we are enjoined to strip the statues of their clothing, and to remove the lights before them. To take down the altars and to level out the steps. Then, in the rule of his son Edward, we must smash the rood loft and pull down the images that stand below it. Rend all the primers and the legendaries, save for the English Bible. Remove all vestments, plate, and bells, and uproot the crosses from the graves. Then in the reign of his sister Mary we must put the altars up again, repaint the saints, repurchase plate and bells and books and vestments, set back up the Latin Bible and destroy the English. Then, when our present queen ...

The problem of visual and verbal representations are of great interest both in the play and in the Afterword where David

Edgar shares with us his experience of working with Gregory Doran, Artistic Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company. David Edgar specifies that he was brought up in a sternly protestant school, while Greg Doran was a Catholic altar boy. As they (and the actors involved) worked on the play they discussed and disputed the fundamental questions of the time. Was it worth stripping altars, smashing windows, beheading statues to acquire the Bible in the vernacular? Was it worth transforming 'a rich and magnificent visual culture into something small and silent and above all monochrome'? David Edgar felt increasingly that, 'for all the sacrifices and the contradictions of the protestant revolution, the move from a visual to a verbal culture, and, most of all, from the image to the book, was a vital precondition for the creation of the modern world'.

Before reading Written on the Heart I had not thought of 'metaphysical' drama'. I love 'metaphysical' poetry, 'metaphysical' sermons. Now I would recommend reading with this perspective in mind. I doubt it is possible not to enjoy magnificent biblical passages from the King James Bible, Tyndale's much more homely sentences, and David Edgar's inventiveness, wit, 'strong lines' ('For if popery is tyranny, then is not puritanism anarchy?' 'The puritan. A man who loves his God with all his soul and hates his neighbour with all his heart').