Four Nights in Knaresborough by Paul Webb.
Corpus Christi Playroom.
Cambridge.
25 to 29 September 2007
Religious and pious times - The Church is a power to be reckoned with.
On Christmas Day 1170, four knights - Reginald FitzUrse, William de Traci,
Richard le Bret and Hugh de Morville - left Henry II's court in Normandy
and four days later killed the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket,
in his own Cathedral. Now... that's not going to make them popular. Career
limiting you might say.
So they ran north and holed up in Knaresborough Castle in Yorkshire. For
a year.
The facts leading up to Becket's murder are known, and the lives of the
knights after Knaresborough are well documented. This play deals with
the missing year.
And those must have been challenging times - four powerful men, close
to the King have to sit in a draughty castle in the North of England and
stare at the walls... Paul Webb creates what might have been. We see our
four Knights over four nights in that year. Close proximity, strong powerful
war leaders, nothing much to do but mither about facing the King and the
Pope.
And there's the presence of a beautiful woman.
That, and not enough firewood. Bound
to be lively...
Knights in chainmail, written in modern English.
Medieval Tarantino.