It was 23rd January 1989.
I had 11 days to write the play in.
I wonder how we managed childcare.
That year I also translated Lorca’s “House of Bernarda Alba” for the Royal Lyceum; translated and adapted “The Magic Theatre” by Cervantes for Winged Horse Theatre Company and “Celestina” by Fernando de Rojas for the National Theatre in London.
To say deadlines were tight would be the wildest understatement.
Bex was going to primary school and Katie was going to nursery.
So there were a good few hours to write in each day.
(Except for the weekends. That left 9 days to write the play in).
And we managed somehow. We always did.
At least I knew the story.
It happened in the 14th century, when Spain and Portugal were at war
There was an arranged marriage between Pedro, the prince of Portugal, and Costanza, a princess of Spain.
Ines was a lady in waiting to the Spanish princess; she and Pedro fell in love with each other, and after Costanza’s death Pedro wanted to marry her.
But the king was persuaded by his advisers that given the hostilities between the two countries the marriage would be dangerous, and while Pedro was away had her killed.
It happened in Coimbra; and the story goes that a spring of water began to flow in the place where her body had fallen.
Soon afterwards, Pedro became king. He had the councillors who had advised the king to be tortured and murdered; and then dug up the corpse of Ines, put it on a throne, and forced his courtiers to kiss her hand and pay homage to her as queen.
And then he commissioned two incredibly ornate tombs to be built in the monastery of Alcobaça.
They face each other across the aisles that , as he says in the play:
“& I'll build her a tomb of stone.
I'll build it with my hands.
We'll face each other in our graves
& when the earth grows weary of us all
& nature finally turns against us
When all the poison we have spilled upon the earth
Returns to us & kills us all
When the sun's light dims & the moon turns to blood
When the heavens open & the dead rise from their graves
Then we shall see each other & never be apart again.”
It’s an incredibly important story in Portugal, one that gets taught in school and that everybody knows.
The poet Camõens told it in his “Lusiadas” (1572), his epic poem about the origins of Portugal and Antonio Ferreira made the story into the first tragedy written in Portuguese in 1558.
To take an incident from Portuguese history and turn it into a tragedy written in Portuguese was a revolutionary thing to do at the time.
Ferreira wanted to do it to assert the dignity and value of Portuguese identity and culture and I wanted to do the same for Scotland.
I wanted to write something that followed the classical rules for writing tragedy: the Three Unities followed by Racine.
And I wanted to have 6 actors to tell the story, and three actors to be the Chorus.
But the Traverse couldn’t afford 9 actors, so I had to make do with six.
Looking back, that helped the play. It tightened the structure: and so did the fact I had so little time to write it in. There was no time to worry: and no time to get blocked.
And this is how I wrote it:
“It was winter.
We lived in a cottage on the outskirts of Edinburgh, in a place called Rosslynn, in a wild wood beside a magical chapel.
I walked the winter woods, I prayed in the chapel: and somehow all kinds of memories came to my aid.
Memories of deaths, mostly: my mothers, my father's, and my father-in-law's.
Memories of love; memories of fear. Of the fear we had, my wife and I, for the future of our children in so dangerous an age”.
There was no time to plan it, either. But then I never did:
“ I don't plan when I write. I just try to become the characters and in my imagination live out their lives. Think what they think, feel what they feel, write out what they say. Be present in the moment, whether it be funny or sad, horrifying or fearful.
Sometimes people ask me how to perform my plays, and I can never tell them. I can't say, well you do this bit loud and this bit soft, or this bit slow or this bit fast. Stand here when you say this, or put a pause in here. It's not for me to say. It's for the actor to do. To do what I tried to do, out there in the winter woods: be in the moment with every scrap of intelligence and skill I might possess. Give myself utterly to the moment: and then move onto the next.
And when it was finished I was afraid. Afraid because I had never seen or read anything like it before: and I had no idea how it could be done. Also it seemed very short. So I persuaded my new computer to put it all into double-spacing. And then I printed it, and handed it in.”
And how often I’ve felt afraid. Afraid of what I have to write: afraid of what I’ve written.
The fear here was especially acute.
But then it was on to the next script. And then rehearsal.
The play opened on 8th July 1989.
As to what happened next….. That’s next week’s story.
To read more about the play, go to my website
As always, I refuse to feel guilty for putting the script behind a paywall.
Writing needs to be given value: and it’s worth every penny
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