How did it all start?
Steve says: “Started when director Paul Chamberlain and I read Mary Laven’s wonderfully cool and lucid Virgins of Venice, broken vows and cloistered lives in the Renaisance convent (2002), about five years ago.
“There must be a film or a play in this,” I said.
But we couldn’t find it. Further reading included Elizabeth’s Makowski Canon Law and Cloistered Women : Periculoso (1997), Silvia Evangelisti’s Nuns (2007), and days and days of trawling the net. Sarah Dunnant’s two wonderful novels set in Renaissance Italy, which in turn sent me chasing Aristo and Boccaccio.
I remember reading a review of a play based on Abelard and Eloise’s letters at the National, and thinking, “Damn, I almost thought of that…” It made me read the letters again. What strikes you is that he speaks with a kind of seasoned authority, but she’s got the edge on him intellectually. There’s something fearless about her thinking. And somewhere the thought glimmered, what if he visited her in her convent after they had been parted… when he can pull rank on her?
And then of course there’s Measure for Measure…”
