Curtmantle [antikvár]

FOREWORDHenry Plantagenet was born in 1133, the son of Matilda (daughter of Henry I) and Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou. During his boyhood England was suffering an eight-year-long agony of civil war, fought between his mother and Stephen of Blois. At the age of twenty-one he was King, and the wealthiest ruler in Europe. At fifty-six he was dead, the sword of State pawned, his heart broken. But 'he had laid the foundations of the English Common Law, upon which succeeding generations would build. Changes in the design would arise, but its main outlines would not be altered'.'Between these two dates there is a seething cauldron of events, conflicts, purposes, errors, brilliance, human endurance, and human suffering, which could provide, in those thirty-five years, all that we need for a lifetime's study and contemplation of mankind. No single play could contain more than a splash from the brew. What to use and what to lose out of this feverish concentration of life ? How far should fidelity to historical events be sacrificed to suit the theatre ?If a playwright is rash enough to treat real events at all, he has to accept a double responsibility: to drag out of the sea of detail a story simple enough to be understood by people who knew nothing about it before; and to do so without distorting the material he has chosen to use. Otherwise let him invent his characters, let him go to Ruritania for his history.To try to re-create what has taken place in this world (or, indeed, to write about life at all) is to be faced by the task of putting a shape on almost limitless complexity. The necessity for the shapingfor 'making a play of it'is inherent in us, because pattern and balance' Winston Churchill, The History of the English-speaking Peoples, Vol. I.[vü]