Sitting in London’s Duchess Theatre recently, I took in a well-written, well-acted production about the English Reformation, and, at the level of words and beyond, the difficult negotiations that those who lived through it had to face. This play, David Edgar’s Written on the Heart, stages the heroic work of William Tyndale and the conflicts of conscience felt by the later Anglican divine Lancelot Andrewes as he ponders throughout the play what is owed to Tyndale’s legacy, linguistically and theologically. (The two, the play aims to show us, are finally inseparable.) The play’s opening questions capture well these tensions of inheritance—how we’re to recognize it and whether or not we’re faithful to it: “Who are you? Do I know you? Are you there?”
Written on the Heart primarily dramatizes several contested word choices in the translation of the King James Bible into English. The play’s opening and closing scenes take place in 1610, as select bishops and translators wrestle with options and work toward a final version of this new translation, whose continuing cultural veneration and vast influence they of course could not foresee. They are concerned about the dual threats of Catholic recusancy and Puritan separatism, or, in their words, tyranny and anarchy. To complicate matters, some among their number seem to advocate for one or the other of these two extremes. With these clerical scuffles in mind, a recent canon at St Paul’s Cathedral praises Written on the Heart in the playbill for its willingness to “challenge the idea that the KJB is some fixed cultural entity to be put on a pedestal and worshipped for its own sake.” He continues, “The Bible did not fall from heaven in 1611—it reflected the preoccupations of its age and time.”
To some this may sound like a subversive’s grinning gambit, but overall the play’s participants in the construction of the King James Bible come off positively, if a little overwhelmed and cornered by circumstances. Audiences encounter the high seriousness of Reformation efforts at scriptural translation, tricky questions of authorship and translation, and the deep learning of those involved. Archbishop Richard Bancroft, whose offstage frailty is frequently mentioned in the play and factors in the staged wranglings in 1610, had a personal library of nearly 9,000 volumes, which he left to the library at the archiepiscopal palace at Lambeth.
Yes, Bible translation was a decidedly sensitive task politically, and one vulnerable to political pressures, but in Renaissance England nearly everything was politically sensitive—births, oaths, mobility in careers, theater-going, traveling abroad, you name it. It may seem bizarre to us today that the Protestant printer John Day would print the Duchess of Suffolk’s coat of arms in an octavo edition of Tyndale’s New Testament translation, but this inclusion fits the times. Anyone dealing boldly with English Bibles had great need of influential Protestant patrons, and compromises were almost always necessary. In this light, it is unsurprising, then, that some of the word choices that make the translators most nervous involve renderings of rulers. How would an English monarch respond, for example, to the “higher powers” or “powers that be” (of Romans 13), or Ephesians 6‘s “worldly rulers”? And better, perhaps, to go with “giants” rather than “tyrants”—wouldn’t want to give a sovereign reader the wrong impression, or cause for royal anger.
Late in Written on the Heart, Edgar strikingly foregrounds the dissonance created in William Tyndale (or rather in his revenant) when he discovers, during a ghostly visit to Andrewes, that the Bible is indeed available in English, and yet his own dreams, decades earlier, of a full, robust reformation of the English church have been only partially fulfilled. The old, tired Andrewes defends the current state of the English church and maintains Tyndale’s central influence: “We have not spit you out,” he assures the disappointed ghost. However, the visual contrast between Tyndale and Andrewes, excellently played by Stephen Boxer and Oliver Ford Davies respectively, is telling. Tyndale’s ghost is no shadowy, spectral wraith: his soiled face and hands, and his prisoner’s torn clothes, signify the sufferings and revolutionary spirit of the early reformers. He resembles a chimney sweep or coal-miner. Conversely, the silver- haired Andrewes, utterly composed in his Stuart ruffs and black-and-white bishop’s vestments, represents a church of “soft and downy times” and of worldly accommodation.
In a humorous moment, Andrewes is embarrassed to have Tyndale’s ghost overhear when his servingman enters to ask him about preferences for altar napkins in his personal chapel, and does he want violet or crimson fabric for his kneeler? This is a far cry from the living Tyndale in the second scene. There he gives powerful voice to his good glad recovery and dissemination of Paul’s insights into the “unspeakable riches of God’s kindness.” Meeting Andrewes in the fourth and final scene, he fears the gospel message has receded well into the distance.
Tyndale, as Boxer plays him in this last scene, is a dramatic seesaw. In one moment he is overjoyed to see signs of his life’s project existing in the world, having escaped the fires of censorship and available, in book form, to ploughman and maid. In the next moment he is vexed by his successors’ shortcomings. “It is a question of how far to go,” Andrewes acknowledges earlier, when asked to adjudicate that final group of contested word choices for the King James translation. Tyndale finds Andrewes and his cohort to be weak tea indeed. Andrewes, though, grave in aspect and mustering fortitude, rises in dignity above the back-and-forth squabbles of the churchmen around him. He values most of all accurate transmission of the original Scriptures, and the best English words that convey their original-language counterparts. Debating the choice of “healed” or “saved” in Romans 10:13, one partisan translator asks him, “Surely as a Protestant you would wish it to be ‘saved.’ ” Andrewes replies that as a Protestant he wishes to render the word’s true meaning, as clearly as possible. The Greek word, he determines, means “healed,” although in this case the partisan’s choice eventually appears in the King James Bible – “For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
The play’s many other examples of translation debate make Written on the Heart enjoyable not only dramatically but intellectually as well. How loyal to Tyndale will the King James Bible translators be? Will they keep “church” or more boldly revert to his choice of “congregation”? Maintain “charity,” or restore his powerful rendering, “love”? How will they come to theological terms with Acts 3:19—”repent” or “do thee penance”? A young priest interrogating Tyndale becomes the butt of his own accusation: he criticizes the imprisoned translator for odd words such as “atone,” “scapegoat,” and “beautiful” (!), and for the “Hebrew nonsense” of some of his English phrases—the “apple of my eye,” “cool of the day,” “fat of the lamb,” and most pointedly, “man of sorrows”—but their familiarity in our own ears today makes his criticisms ironic.
The noble work and centuries-spanning fellowship involved in biblical translation comes to life onstage when Andrewes and Tyndale’s ghost read from each others’ translations. (Or, more precisely, Tyndale is consulting the not-yet-printed quires of the King James version upon which Andrewes is making final edits.) The pair reads more or less simultaneously, so that the great influence of Tyndale’s version on the 1611 text is noticeable in the many words shared. Tyndale’s raggedly dressed ghost sits and reads, appearing as if he were paging through the New York Times at an outdoor café table. When the two versions differ, the translators discuss and defend their choices. The more elevated tone of the current version exasperates Tyndale. “Less majesty!” he exclaims. Why “Verily, verily” where “Truly” will do? Why “And it came to pass” instead of “When time was come”? They have taken the Bible from the ploughman and made it a book for the bishops.
Tyndale seems a little like the Ghost from Christmas Past in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, except that it is the one visited, Andrewes, who is the information-bearer. He explains how many of Tyndale’s reforming contemporaries were likewise martyred, which pains the ghost greatly to learn, and Tyndale is also surprised to learn that other English translations that have followed his—the Geneva and Rheims versions, for example. The Bishops Bible, the authorized base text that the King James Bible translators were revising, comes in for some derision as Andrewes admits it contains “some extraordinary infelicities.” Earning a laugh from the audience, Andrewes gave one example: “Lay thy bread upon wet faces.” Both translators, attuned to speech that is true, know a clunker when they hear it. They enjoy together the intricacies of word selection and placement: not “a still small voice” for 1 Kings 19, Tyndale advises, but “a small, still voice.” We know how that one turned out. Most touching of all is Andrewes’ deep admiration, despite theological or ceremonial differences, for Tyndale’s work, for the “beauty of those words,” as he says simply, which he elsewhere states are “godly with comfort and color.”
Overall, the staging of this embattled context for translation, and even the severe scrutiny of a posthumous Tyndale, adds a patina of further heroism – the King James Bible translators produced an enduring edition in the face of sometimes ruthless or petty struggles, and they had to live up to and do right by a grand but also imposing tradition of Protestant martyrs and scholars inspired by the first wave of reformation a century before.
That celebratory element is apt, once one appreciates the origin of Written on the Heart. It emerged from a three-day conference at Stratford-upon-Avon in 2008, well in advance of last year’s 400th anniversary of the King James Bible, which Books & Culture has covered both in print and online. There is something pleasing to me in imagining that setting, with Alister McGrath addressing the actors, writers, and directors of the Royal Shakespeare Company. In this country, the worlds of scholars, theologians, and artists seem farther apart. The playwright Edgar prepared a first draft of the play, which was then workshopped by the RSC during a residency at the University of Michigan in 2010. The play then opened in Stratford in October 2011, and took its place amid other surprisingly numerous theatrical commemorations of the KJB’s anniversary—the Word of God series at The Globe in London, including Howard Brenton’s well-reviewed play Anne Boleyn that also features William Tyndale, the Sixty-Six Books project at the Bush Theatre, and readings at the National Theatre.
Even within the context of the KJB anniversary, these are really weird characters and subjects for a contemporary play, right? So I hope I’m to be forgiven if I caught myself, during a few moments in the performance, in moments of audience bad-faith it seems to me, pulling back from the play’s prayers and debates, hauntings and visitations (really, a literal ecclesiastical visitation). I was thrilled at the high improbability of such a play not only existing, but also being popular and acclaimed enough to land in London’s commercial theater district. Were the bright lights of the West End actually shining upon figures and matters of great importance to Protestants and all English-speaking Christians? Where the play’s central action is summed up by the line, “The pile of Bibles, please fetch them”? Behold, I shew you a mystery, indeed. I might add that this sense of unreality was of the happy variety, the I-can-feel-the-stupid-smile-on-my-face sort of feeling. Those interested in English church history and scriptural translation should make efforts to obtain the script, since, alas, the London production has just closed.
Yet, even with the production now past, the text itself will be worthy of consideration. The playwright Edgar, whose previous work includes another play of dense history, Pentecost, about the recent tragedy of Sarajevo, handles well the intricacies of this world, and his handling will reward general curiosity. As for those less interested, or ones simply less knowledgeable of the early modern English milieu placed onstage in Edgar’s play, well, I don’t know if it would make for a pleasing night of theater, or a mainly futile, inscrutable thing. I will let someone else be the judge of this. The debates do make their demands upon audiences, as, in a play such as this, they necessarily must. Yet the debating itself is pleasingly done.
The performances by Davies and Boxer were the show’s most memorable. When the play ended, with both figures frozen in a face-to-face position, one affectionately patted the other’s arm when they broke their stances for the applause. Jodie McNee, as Andrewes’ servingwoman Mary Currer, gave another memorable performance, and indeed she was a scene stealer both times she stepped downstage to speak courageously to her more educated, higher-classed male superiors. Despite her disenfranchisement, she is fiercely literate, having been taught the Scriptures in William Tyndale’s version, and knowing of the punishments and sacrifices of earlier reformers, whose names and fates she found in John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs: Bilson, Hooper, Rogers, Cranmer, and others. The character of Currer offers a defiant voice that scandalizes the more moderate Andrewes. She speaks with a martyr’s fervor, while he is prone to compromise. Currer represents well one of the more godly if less educated of the “communities of interpretation” existing within that complicated nexus of readerships that Ian Green identifies in Print, Protestantism in Early Modern England.
Likewise missed when reading the script alone will be the set’s captivating religious architecture and imagery. For example, Andrewes’ private chapel features an altar that carefully follows the dictates of the Book of Common Prayer … except for the crucifix and mass chalice (Tyndale’s ghost later sweeps away this “Romish trumpery”). Similarly, a descending wooden crucifix signaled to us that the second scene, featuring a condemned William Tyndale imprisoned in Flanders in 1536, was taking place earlier in time, and in a locale on the Continent in which the Reformation had not taken hold.
In a middle scene, the intended destruction of stained glass in a parish church, and the resistance that meets it, sets the scene for one of the play’s most suspenseful moments. In that scene, too, the presence of a more vigorous young chaplain makes for an interesting parallel characterization. Edgar invites audiences to compare this young man with the older, more resigned and tentative bishop Andrewes. Both appear as conflicted figures involved in the sometimes harsh enforcements of ecclesiastical law. “My liking is not to judge,” the older Andrewes will say. Here, the younger chaplain does not have the luxury to withdraw, and so he oscillates. He first justifies the elimination of Catholic worship practices by warning one parish warden forcefully of the Spanish menace (the scene is set in 1586, two years before the Armada sails for England), but then, secretly, he takes a confiscated chalice for himself, and provides funds for the warden to restore some of the parish’s outlawed items. The Puritan seems the true villain by scene’s end, for he “hates his neighbor with all of his heart.”
In a sweet, meta-theatrical moment, I visited before and after the show with a young actor sitting beside me. He was currently performing in a production of Antigone at the National Theatre across the river, and was here tonight to see a co-star in that production, Jamie Ballard, playing the role of the chaplain. The connection of the actor’s, if not the character’s, with Sophocles’ Greek tragedy delighted me because it introduced, in a roundabout way, the deeply classical learning that these Renaissance humanist churchmen brought to bear upon questions of biblical translation. Within the play, the character of Samuel Ward is ridiculed for his past acting, which in a collegiate context likely signaled classical and humanist interests. When we meet Ward here, he attempts to persuade Andrewes of the superiority of certain translation decisions, being a fellow at Sidney Sussex College, historically one of the more strongly Protestant colleges at Cambridge.
“I am still here,” says the ghost of Tyndale to Andrewes, after visitors have interrupted the bishop’s and ghost’s conversation. The comment is an advertent self-reassurance, as Tyndale’s ghost comes to terms with which parts of his project have succeeded, and which remain incomplete. It also, as I think of it, supplies an answer to those troubled questions that open the play.
“I am still here.” It is a welcomed thing to hear, and to be reminded of, in this distracting, forward-looking day and age, when pastors are more likely to keep on their nightstand motivational books and ones on the latest business leadership methods, rather than writings by the desert fathers or Anglican divines, or Flannery O’Connor or Frederick Buechner for that matter. Edgar’s Written on the Heart does a surprisingly engaging job of contributing to Tyndale’s ongoing presence, whose example is still needed. Tyndale’s life and the work that led to his death deserve more regard than they receive, particularly after a year’s worth of adoration directed at the King James translators whom he largely enabled. Those debates of his near contemporaries featured in this play make it clear to us today that we remain in his debt. Tyndale is still here, whenever any of us contemplate God’s mercies and comforts, which his character repeatedly speaks of, and whenever we give voice to these thoughts in the “common speech” of the English language.
Brett Foster is associate professor of English at Wheaton College. The Garbage Eater, his first collection of poems, was published last year by Northwestern University Press. He is also a teacher and scholar of the English Renaissance, with articles on Christopher Marlowe and Henry VIII recently published or forthcoming.
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