As our Millennium project, we have commissioned a new piece of music by Ronan Magill to accompany a play, Tyrannick Love, by John Dryden about St Catherine of Alexandria. This play with music will be performed in several locations during Dorset Arts Week in late May, early June 2000. To make this work possible we have received a substantial grant from the Millennium Fund together with generous support from the D'Oyly Carte Charitable Trust, West Dorset District Council and South West Arts.

Why did we choose St Catherine for the subject of our project?

The first reason is that she is there. Anyone who knows Abbotsbury knows her chapel which has stood on its gentle hill above the village for 600 years. It is a building of immense solidity for its small size, ancient, comforting, fascinating and visited daily by many people. The chapel is there because St Catherine was one of the leading saints of the old Christian calendar. We may not believe in saints today, but we live in a society which was built by those who did. Saints died for their faith, providing an example to people of the courage required to stand up for their beliefs; they gave solace in the face of the human suffering and uncertainty that are still with us.

What was Dryden's play?

Dryden (1631 - 1700), writing in the uneasy peace after the restoration of Charles II, found an audience which had survived a bitter civil war fought on the issue of the divine right of Kings, if you were a Royalist - or of tyranny, if you were a Roundhead. The subject fascinated everyone, but Dryden had to find an example safely buried in the mists of history. He picked on Maximinus, one of the last pagan Roman Emperors, who according to legend, persecuted christians and destroyed St Catherine.

Tyrannick Love was the first of a series of successful plays on tyrants which Dryden wrote between 1669 and 1675.

For his original audience the interest probably centred on the breathtaking egocentricity of Maximin.. But for us, Maximin is the anvil on which St Catherine is forged into a saint. She goes through five separate trials:

- Debate with the pagan philosophers,
- Maximin's offer of the crown of Egypt, then his own hand and the reversion of Berenice's crown,
- A trial by Nigrinus' magic - foiled by the angel Amariel,
- The possibility of saving Berenice by giving in to Maximin, or by escaping from prison - but thereby losing her crown of martyrdom,
- Real fear of her own death. She movingly complains:

Could we live always, life were worth our cost;
But now we keep with care what must be lost.
Here we stand shivering on the bank, and cry,
When we should plunge into eternity
One moment ends our pain;
And yet the shock of death we dare not stand.

 The play's the thing

V. Green, engraving of Nell Gwynne

The charming Nell Gwynne spoke a silly, tension-breaking epilogue after the play's first performance to such effect that King Charles II rushed backstage after the curtain and instantly raised her to her present high position in English history. She became one of his several mistresses. The most important of these was the unpopular, catholic Anne de Kerouaille, foisted onto him by the French King. Nell was once mistaken by the London mob for her rival. She leant out of her coach and said: "Good people, do not hurt me. I am the Protestant whore".

It seems that the very first play ever performed in England was about St Catherine: Ludus Sanctae Caterinae (The Play of St Catherine) by Geoffrey de Gorrain, performed in 1100 at St Albans.

For the basis of our script we used Sir Walter Scott's 1883 edition of Dryden's complete works, removing a number of minor characters and shortening the text by about two thirds to reveal the core of the play in the clash between Maximin and St Catherine.

We chose to present a play with music rather than an opera because an opera would require a completely rewritten libretto to harmonise with the music. In the process we would lose much of Dryden's muscular, logical verse. Conversely, any attempt to set Dryden's verse to music would hobble the music in his rhyming couplets. The solution, to accompany the play with music, poignantly enhances the story while preserving the beauties of the text. The music was specially written by Ronan Magill . A demo piece is attached.

The world premiere will be in St Nicholas' Church, Abbotsbury on Monday, 29th May, 2000. We will perform in the Dorchester Museum on Wednesday 31st May, and, we hope, at other sites, including Lyme Regis and Muchelny (in Somerset), in the South West soon after. Updates will be posted here and on the Abbotsbury Music site as soon as we know the dates.

If you are interested in hosting a performance or mounting your own production, please email us. Also if you have any more information about St Catherine or images of her, please let us know.

Banners

In May 2000, to help celebrate Dorset Arts Week, we shall be organising an exhibition of long banners made by the people of Abbotsbury.
This will be on display in St. Catherine's Chapel, Abbotsbury.