Helping Authors to Get their Writing
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Writing my play ‘The Fire of Love’
I first met Kings Lynn’s medieval visionary Margery Kempe when I was an undergraduate. 50 years later I still don’t feel that I know her well.
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Being scarcely literate, she had to dictate her Book, and it’s the first known autobiography in English. A manuscript copy was found in 1934 and published both in Margery’s Norfolky Middle English and in modern translations.
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My own translation appeared in 1995, and the way it was marketed reflected different sides of Margery’s life and character. The UK edition bore a pious artwork on its front cover; the US edition sported raspberry-coloured vulgarity. As if by way of compromise, the cover of the latest edition, published by Gracewing, shows drunken pilgrims in muted colours! (Margery travelled to distant shrines in very varied company.)
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Margery often seems unaware of her effect on others. In an incident in the Middle East her fellow pilgrims set off without her, evidently wanting relief from her religious injunctions. Saintly or sanctimonious, Margery stuck to her noisy ways.
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I started my play 30 years ago as the task of translation came to an end, and Margery speaks in the play with even less inhibition than she does in the Book - inspiring great acting. ​
Margery shares her visions with particular intensity. Thus when the first act climaxes in midwife Margery delivering Christ and the second in her presence at the crucifixion we see and hear the total unquestioning involvement of her whole being. No birthing mother or crucified Christ appears onstage, so the power of her conviction must make them as real for the audience as they are for her. Premièring the play in March 2025, the Wells-next-the-Sea Theatre Society rose to the challenge!
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The final act features Margery’s trial for blasphemy, turning especially on her claim to intimate relations with God. Set against this enormity is the poignancy of Margery’s dependence, for defence, on her senile husband, John, with his proneness to embarrassing spoonerisms.
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Their married love emerges at many points in the Book and in my play is most keenly felt when the two are taken from the courtroom in different directions, John pathetically calling out, ‘You ain’t going to hang my wife on no giblet. I won’t get no more dumplin’s like hers.’
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The play leaves the audience to reach their own verdict. Speaking for myself, I have to say that there’s hardly a single aspect of Margery Kempe on which I’ve made up my mind. Perhaps that’s what sustained my creative engagement with her for 50 years!
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The script is ready to hand on Amazon. 'Triggs Fire of Love' or 'Kempe Fire of Love' will find it wherever you are in the world. If you wish to discuss a possible performance use the form below, giving details of your theatre, drama group or church and the role you play in it. Kindly name your country if it’s non-UK.
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Tony D Triggs top.note@yahoo.co.uk