Judgment at Chelmsford E-Book

Charles Williams

• Herausgeber: Ktoczyta.pl
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

„Judgement at Chelmsford” is a pageant play, written for a church setting. The author Charles Williams (1886-1945), who was a British theologian, playwright, novelist and poet, was commissioned to produce this play to mark the 25th anniversary of The Diocese of Chelmsford in 1939. In it, he created a huge, sprawling drama about the history of Chelmsford. Eight episodes, a prologue and epilogue, make this a formidable work. It was intended to be a large-scale pageant play and explores both historical and spiritual themes. Thus the complete pageant offers a representation not only of the history of the diocese, but of the movement of the soul of man in its journey from the things of this world to the heavenly city of Almighty God.

Leseprobe

Contents

Prologue

Episode I. Modern Life

Episode II. The Chelmsford Witches

Episode III. The Reformation

Episode IV. The Girl Abbess of Barking

Episode V. John Ball and the Peasant Rising

Episode VI. St. Osyth and the Danes

Episode VII. Old King Cole

Episode VIII. The Invention of the Cross

Epilogue

PROLOGUE

The place is outside the gates of Heaven, considered as in the air above the diocese. CHELMSFORD enters

CHELMSFORD. I am a young See, yet I am one with all the rest of Christendom, blest as they– Canterbury, Rome, Constantinople, Antioch, Jerusalem, my predecessors, my brothers and lords. My house is in the plains beyond the mouth of Thames, and built by the rushing wind and the tongued flames where the coast of heaven borders the English coast and the byres of Essex are the shires of the Holy Ghost. I am as old as the whole Church in Britain. Cedd raised the first rough fold of my sheep and I hallow his name wholesomely where the plough shears the fields still as in his own years, but otherwise now towns are much of my ministry: mark them, the might, mirth, and misery of England, spreading, treading hard on each other’s heels, making me changed from what I was once, before the charge of my children was wholly mine, before the mitre touched my brows with something darker than age, to assuage their need, comfort, console, cherish, lest if they perish I too be cast from the place with my peers, the patriarchates, the heavenly thrones whose zones map Christendom, in England, and beyond where the great ships float from my river. To-day the fledged heel of Contemplation strikes the edged wheel of Time, to spin it, and heaven opens within. It is my birthday; on this feast I come to the place of grace in vision, to the gate of heaven, to walk and talk with the grand celestial princes, they who assess the deeds of the Church militant on earth, and confess in clear light the fulfilment of their needs. I am come shyly to meet them; blessed be he who made me also in Christendom holy and free.

A kind of gentle discord. The ACCUSER comes in

THE ACCUSER. Halt there, sweet!

CHELMSFORD. Whose feet here interpose between me and those who await me?

THE ACCUSER. Child of the Apostles, do you hope to come quite so easily into heaven? think again. The Apostolic Sees will have something to say to that; and I too, whether they do or not.

CHELMSFORD. Who are you? where do you come from?

THE ACCUSER. I come from going with time up and down the earth, testing the worth of the confessors. David and Job, Peter and Paul, Becket and Wesley knew me; there are few who do not. The Creator of all, Primal Wisdom, primal Justice, primal Love, made me and bade me to my work. I stand at the right hand of all men in their hour of death; but also they may see me at any hour. Their breath catches, their blood is cold, they remember their sins. They see what they have made of their lives.

CHELMSFORD. But why to me now, to-day, at the gate of heaven?

THE ACCUSER. Sweet, your world is become perilous to you. This is no age with long peaceful hours fastidiously changing young things into old; families, cities, churches gradually thriving through the happy quiet virtues, as the corn grows. The air is dangerous with flames other than Pentecost and a host other than angelic rides–hark!

[The noise of aeroplanes at a distance

Day and dark alike carry the things that strike bitterly and awfully at bed and board leaving the dead in the shelters and in the streets. Hark!

[The distant sound of bombs; a faint scream or two. Aeroplanes

If you were called to-night to be judged, how could you answer? do not speak; I have come to show.

[The aeroplanes seem to pass over

CHELMSFORD. I take refuge with God.

THE ACCUSER. So do; but I too, I shall be there. Call on your refuge, call. I will call for you. Ho, heavens of creation, ho, ministers of justice, vengeance, mercy, ho, foundations of grace; come down and hear.

CHELMSFORD. Mercy of God, justify me.

THE ACCUSER. Truth of God, exhibit her!

[The CHORUS without begins the Dies irae interrupted by the bombs

THE CHORUS. Dies irae...

[The procession of the SEES, accompanied by MUSICIANS and CANDLE-BEARERS. When they have taken their places they speak

CANTERBURY. I am Canterbury; Augustine taught me; beside Augustine I gathered to myself the fruits of Iona and Glastonbury; I have fathered many children; you, daughter, loved as much as any. I will know what you know.

ROME. I am Rome; Peter made me and blessed Paul; no small history is mine, and yet all is to be the servant of servants and intercede as Peter at need was lamb-like bidden to do.

CONSTANTINOPLE. I am Constantinople; I raised a Church to Holy Wisdom; it turned to a mosque. The East famished; the West forgot; but God discerned through all how I praised the Unity.

ANTIOCH. Antioch am I; in me the faithful were named Christian first, shamed a little in the naming, a scandal to others. O Christians, are you to yourselves a scandal now? or by yourselves unblamed?

JERUSALEM. I am the oldest and youngest of all the Sees, Jerusalem; the body of my Bishop was never shrined after it was twined on the criss-cross pontifical chair, and a mitre there of a sharp kind on his head.

ALL THE SEES [stretching their arms upwards and outwards to touch their fingers]. Blessed and hallowed and praised be the Thing in us communicating each to other and other to each, Blessed and hallowed and praised in the beginning and in the ending be God, in time and beyond time.

CANTERBURY. Daughter, when Contemplation called to us that you were waiting at the gate of the third heaven we arose and came; the fame of all the bishoprics comes up to us; we have loved you much for the souls that sprang into heaven by the touch that took from our own the power of your hand; and the speech of your voice that learned to teach others as we taught you. But it seems the Accuser of all things, living and dead, the dweller on the threshold of love, is here too, new-set to hinder and hamper your coming.

THE ACCUSER. Neither to hamper nor hinder; I show fact outward and inward. It is her business if the facts of her history rise between her and you to shut the gate of heaven in her face, and her fate leaves her outside.

CANTERBURY. When the High God made you, brother, he bade you interpret in your fashion– the worst of the worst; accuracy without compassion, curst things always shown as guilt– often, not always, they are. Call some other, some friend of our child, to show the other side of truth: even truth has always two sides.