Eternal Love (NHB Modern Plays)

Howard Brenton

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781780015088
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Drama
• Index: Literature

A spellbinding new telling of a passionate and legendary love story.

When Abelard begins a wild affair with his brilliant student Heloise, his enemies find the perfect pretext to destroy him. Abelard is already on thin ice with the church over his contentious views and when Heloise bears his child out of wedlock, their affair becomes the scandal of the age...

Previously published as In Extremis, this new version of the play premiered in February 2014, co-produced by English Touring Theatre and the Globe Theatre.

'fascinating' - Guardian

'A passionate, bracing play of ideas that has topical urgency as well as historical fascination' - Financial Times

'Romeo and Juliet with more brains... Brenton peers into medieval mindsets with an unashamedly modern sensibility. Highly recommended' - Daily Telegraph

'a play for today in medieval costume' - Independent

ACT ONE

Scene One

Cloisters.

HELOISE and WOMEN FRIENDS are leaving church with FULBERT, Heloise’s uncle. He is a canon. When the young WOMEN are in his sight, they are demure. When he looks away, they hit each other playfully behind his back. He never quite catches them.

FULBERT. I have always known I would never be great.

HELOISE. No, Uncle. I mean yes, Uncle.

FULBERT. But I look at our city of Paris shining in God’s light this Trinity Sunday morning…

He indicates the landscape and looks away. HELOISE and her FRIENDS hit each other.

…and when I look up at our great church of Notre Dame…

He turns, they stop hitting each other.

I know that I am at least near to greatness.

HELOISE. You are a canon of the great church, Uncle. St Augustine teaches us that to be part of the City of God is to be part of greatness.

FULBERT. Ah, Heloise. Have you actually read St Augustine’s City of God?

HELOISE. Yes, Uncle.

FULBERT. It is a book of such vast dimensions, I am amazed a girl of seventeen can lift it, let alone read it.

HELOISE. Oh, I can’t lift it, Uncle.

FULBERT. My dear, your cleverness is a wonder and a pleasure to me.

HELOISE bows. Her FRIENDS look down. He turns away, they start hitting each other again.

Is our Paris the new Jerusalem on earth, built by the power of learning? And the power of the wool trade of course. Wool and theology.

He turns. They stop. A pause. Does he suspect something?

Perhaps there is a sermon for me to give in there.

HELOISE. Shall I write it for you, Uncle? It will be on the sanctity of sheep, and the shearing of St Augustine.

FULBERT. Was St Augustine sheared?

HELOISE. As a young heathen, by the knife of God’s grace.

FULBERT. Is God’s grace a knife?

HELOISE. Yes, it cuts our conscience.

FULBERT. Mm. (Pauses, eyeing the precocious HELOISE.) Write it rough. I will smooth it with a man’s hand.

WILLIAM OF CHAMPEAUX enters, with young MEN and MONKS, amongst them ALBERIC, LOTHOLF and PETER ABELARD.

FRANCINE. It’s the cloister school!

MARIE. What are they saying?

WILLIAM (droning). Therefore, as Plato has taught us, there is, in Heaven, the perfect form of everything that is in this world.

HELOISE. I think he’s teaching Plato’s universals.

MARIE. Oh dear.

HELOISE. It’s what Magister William is famous for. Plato’s theory that everything on earth is only a copy of what is in Heaven.

MARIE. Right.

HELOISE steps forward to listen.

WILLIAM. A carpenter makes a table, badly.

STUDENT. It’s got three legs.

All but ABELARD laugh. WILLIAM is irritated.

WILLIAM. But though a table upon earth be imperfect, in Heaven there is the perfect table. The abstract table, the form to which all earthly tables aspire. It is the universal idea of a table, in the mind of God.

ABELARD. I disagree.

FRANCINE. Who… is… that?

WILLIAM shudders. ALBERIC and LOTHOLF are disgusted. The other STUDENTS are excited.

WILLIAM. Not again, Abelard, I beg you.

ABELARD. Magister, tell me, this piece of ideal furniture, around which the saints in Heaven sit for their dinner…

A suppressed giggle from a STUDENT.

…does it have four sides?

WILLIAM. It’s a table. Yes yes.

ABELARD. And four legs?

WILLIAM (a moment’s hesitation). Yes yes.

ABELARD (points at a STUDENT). Is your table with three legs a good table?

STUDENT 1. It could be like a big stool.

STUDENT 2. A tripod. Like they have for the big candles, at the high altar…

STUDENT 3. And round.

ABELARD. Why not?

WILLIAM. Ah…

ABELARD (ignoring WILLIAM, concentrating on the STUDENTS). And would this round, three-legged table, work for the less than ideal dinners we eat on earth?

STUDENT 2. Why not?

ABELARD (to WILLIAM). Then would we not have a perfection on earth, which does not follow its perfection in Heaven?

WILLIAM. No no. You would have an inadequacy on earth. No matter how many meals you eat off it, it will forever be a shadow of the perfection in Heaven.

ABELARD. But this perfection in Heaven… You’ve told us it has four legs and four sides.

WILLIAM. Yes.

ABELARD. How long is it? How wide?

WILLIAM. It’s long and wide enough. Because it’s perfect.

ABELARD. But perfect for what? For a father and mother and son to have a meal? Perfect for ten to have a meal? Perfect for five thousand? And if the archangels in Heaven themselves are huge beings, as some say they are, is the table big enough for them to sit at? Magister William, please tell us, exactly how long, exactly how wide, how tall, how thick, how shiny, how rough is this perfect table? And if any table on earth is a near imperfect copy, does that mean that the heavenly table is wider, taller, thicker, shinier, rougher than any on earth? No, surely, if a stool or a flat stone is good enough to eat bread from, it’s as good a table as any other. The essence of the table is not its heavenly perfection. Its essence is its function, here on earth.

All look at WILLIAM, who is taking short breaths and for a moment cannot speak.

WILLIAM. Day after day I have this from you. Stop it! Just stop it!

ABELARD. I am disputing.

WILLIAM. There is nothing to dispute. I am the teacher, you are the student. I teach, you learn and that is that.

ABELARD. But, Magister, how can I know that what you teach is true, unless I question it? And, if my reasoning is right, that the essence of things is their function on earth, must we not conclude that the whole idea of heavenly forms, of universals, is nonsense?

WILLIAM (losing it. ALBERIC and LOTHOLF support him). How dare you.

HELOISE raises a hand, as if to ask a question herself. ABELARD sees her. They stare at each other.

ALBERIC. To question the universals is to question the Trinity itself.

Some of the STUDENTS look shocked.

FULBERT (to HELOISE and her FRIEND...