The Renaissance that never was

Set against that backdrop was one of the most tragic romances of all time, between the teacher and logician Pierre Abelard and his 17-year-old student Heloise.

The Church used the couple’s affair to quell the revolution of reason challenging their dominance. Many of the philosophical ideas explored at that time wouldn’t see the light again until the start of the European Renaissance 200 years later.

Now the story is being revived by the same team behind English Touring Theatre’s production of Howard Brenton’s Anne Boleyn, which was at Theatre Royal Brighton last year. John Dove will direct Jo Herbert and David Sturzaker in the leading roles.

Abelard and Heloise’s affair and the Renaissance that never was is at the heart of Brenton’s Eternal Love, which was originally staged under the title In Extremis at Shakespeare’s Globe in 2006.

“It’s an extraordinary time that we don’t really know about in this country,” says Brenton on a break from rehearsals in English Touring Theatre’s Southwark performance space.

“It was a time when the world was breaking up and new possibilities were pouring into Europe. People were discovering Aristotle and huge philosophical advances were being made.

“There was this incredible confidence because of these new ideas, and Abelard and Heloise were right at the centre of it.”

According to director Dove, much of this new thinking was down to the close links between the medieval West and the East with its libraries packed with philosophy and original manuscripts.

“Manuscripts were being brought to Paris as traders went to the cloth fairs,” he says. “A lot of the ideas of Aristotle came from Iran and Byzantium through the Silk Road trade route and the common language in Europe [Latin]. It was a European community like the EEC but it really did work!”

Unfortunately, lined up against the lovers was the religious fundamentalism of Cistercian abbot Bernard of Clairvaux.

“Bernard was absolutely dedicated to an austere life,” says Brenton. “People died of starvation in his ministry, eating grass, because they were so focused on religious ideas.

“Abelard said you could use human reason to understand the world; Bernard said if you rely on reason you will destroy faith in God. That conflict becomes mashed up in the love affair between Abelard and Heloise.”

For Dove, it was important that both sides of the argument were heard.

“You have to give each person their voice,” he says. “A lot of what Bernard is saying is right, just as much as what Abelard is saying.

If you go outside the authorities and try to work out who you are rather than running around as part of the crowd you can learn a lot more. It’s just as hard to do now.

“Men and women were being given the opportunity to take the reins themselves rather than being told what to do.”

Brenton penned his first draft of the play in the late 1990s while living and working in California.

“About ten or 15 years ago the evangelical movement in the US was very powerful,” he says.

“This was a play about the conflict between fundamentalism and what we would call modernism. That religious division is centuries old.

“The conflict between Abelard and Heloise on one side and Bernard on the other was what was so attractive about the story.”

The only change he has made to this 2014 production is the title, which he admits was always problematic.

“There was a play in 1970 by Ronald Millar called Abelard And Heloise, so out of a playwright’s loyalty I couldn’t call it that,” says Brenton, who originally called the play In Extremis.

“Eternal Love refers to two kinds of love – the profane and the religious.”

Abelard and Heloise’s memories of their affair were captured in letters they wrote to each other from their respective monasteries and convents many years after their love was brutally ended by the Church and Heloise’s uncle Fulbert. These letters are still being published and read today.

“The reminiscences of their affair are extraordinary,” says David Sturzaker, who plays Abelard.

“In the early part of Abelard’s autobiography [Historia Calamitatum, which describes the disasters which befell him during this period], he says his lectures became terrible because he couldn’t concentrate on his schooling. He was consumed by his love for Heloise.

“They spent more time together looking into each other’s eyes and professing love for each other than reading texts. People had been in love before, but for people in Abelard and Heloise’s position it was quite radical.”

“The letters they wrote to each other are heart-breaking,” adds Jo Herbert, who last played opposite real-life partner Sturzaker as the doomed Anne Boleyn to his Henry VIII in the 2012 touring production of Brenton’s retelling of the love affair that caused the Reformation.

“They are full of love and hope for a better life. They really put their heart and soul into the letters. It must have been so exciting to receive them. Reading Heloise and Abelard’s letters made me want to write letters to all my friends.

“It’s a good story about real people, which I think always makes it more interesting. Their bravery in that time and the way Howard has written it makes it so accessible. It’s not like going to a theatre and being lectured at for three hours – it’s funny and moving, it has everything in such a short period of time.”

When Heloise’s uncle Fulbert discovered the affair – after his niece fell pregnant – he sent a band of men to castrate Abelard.

“Abelard’s castration wasn’t quite what we think of it today,” says Dove. “These people were farmers around the time of Robin Hood and the Sheriff Of Nottingham – they knew how to do it.

“Anyone at the time would have understood – it was legally acceptable. King Louis VI did it personally to a servant who betrayed him. This was way before a police force or lawyers. Abelard had broken the law as Fulbert’s family saw it. Abelard himself says the pain was nothing like the loss of pride.”

Heloise was forced to become a nun, while Abelard went to the monastery of St Denis near Paris, where their only contact was through letters.

Despite being forced into the convent, Heloise did not disappear. She became a successful abbess and even took a nobleman to court for attempting to take away her land.

“She was considered to be very successful,”

says Dove. “She kept saying she was doing it all for Abelard, not for God. Women had this tremendous chance at freedom which they then lost because it was all taken away from them.”

The ultimate tragedy in the play is the way the revolution of thought was suppressed by Bernard.

“These were people for whom the future broke out too early,” says Brenton. “They were living in the 12th century and the Renaissance happened 200 years later – they were trying to break out but were suppressed.

“Bernard encouraged a reckless Crusade. The books were all burned and the translation of Aristotle was stopped. It all went quiet for 200 years.

“We are still debating some of the ideas in this play, and we are still living with the consequences of this debate.”

When it came to writing the play, Brenton was careful to pitch it both for people who were aware of the history of the period and those who will be coming to it for the first time.

“You have to write for both audiences,”

he says. “There is a great model for that in Bertolt Brecht’s Life Of Galileo, which delivers information without you noticing it.”

As with Anne Boleyn, Eternal Love received its premiere at Shakespeare’s Globe – a venue which both intimidated the playwright and allowed him a great deal of freedom.

“It is Shakespeare’s theatre,” says Brenton, who is now working on a third Globe play, Doctor Scroggy’s War, about a First World War physician supporting soldiers with severe facial injuries.

“You think there’s a ghost in the gallery looking down on you and challenging you.

“I learned with Anne Boleyn in The Globe that you can turn to the audience and say ‘Two years later’, or a character can walk around a pillar and say ‘It is now ten years later’. A great example of that is Shakespeare’s Antony And Cleopatra, which shifts between Rome and Egypt.

“There aren’t any sets in The Globe – Shakespeare’s plays were only divided up into scenes when they came to print them in the folio.

“This is a great story and the Globe is a great storytelling theatre. It likes a mix of high and low ideas, it likes humour and seriousness – comedy and tragedy can rub up against each other. I have always liked that in my writing anyway.”

• Eternal Love is at Theatre Royal Brighton, New Road, from Tuesday, April 1, to Saturday, April 5. Starts 7.45pm, 2.30pm matinees on Thursday and Saturday, tickets from £10. Call 0844 8717650