Access to Art to Present Renaissance Play ‘Bound By Truth’

CAPE MAY – Access to Art will present Music and the Spoken Word in the English Renaissance featuring Dr. Burton Greenspan (Juilliard, BM, Indiana U. doctorate in performance) discussing music in the courts of England in the l6th century, and performing a work on his violin, and a new play reading featuring a father, a daughter, a king. The event is scheduled for Dec. 13th at 7 p.m. Thursday evening, at the Southern Mansion, 720 Washington St., Cape May.
The King is Henry VIII, married for two decades, and without a male heir. The last time the kingdom was run by a female was 400 years prior. The father is Sir Thomas More, swept into the chancellorship of England, after Cardinal Wolsey, who could not obtain an annulment for Henry from the Spanish Queen, Catherine of Aragon, fell from favor. He was sentenced to the tower, and death, but he had the great good grace to die a week before the ordeal.
The daughter is More’s eldest, the accomplished Margaret More Roper, known, along with Thomas’s other daughters and son, for their humanist education. More and Erasmus were famed for their humanism, and for writing both “In Praise of Folly,” dedicated to More by Erasmus, and “Utopia,” a rejoinder by More to Erasmus. Margaret is known as a distinguished translator, capable of translating from Greek to Latin to English and back again. Her father is delighted with her skill in translating, and her fine style in Latin, and shows off her letters to English Cardinals and literati, who are duly impressed. However, when her tutor suggests she write a book, Thomas More demurs. He wants her to be brilliant, yet humble, and not to seek “vain glory.” Thomas More, a great friend of the humanist, Erasmus, has experimented with a school in Chelsea, his home on the Thames, bringing in major dons from Oxford, scholars from the continent, and giving his daughters a classical humanist education in a time when women were never educated. Erasmus is delighted with Margaret’s skills as a translator, and she translates a piece that he has written in Latin into English. Thomas is the first non-cleric in the position for 100 years. It is a slap at pope Clement VII who did not grant the annulment. Clement VII was a bit unnerved by two facts: the first, the papacy had already given Henry an annulment to marry Catherine the wife of his brother, Arthur, who died at l5 a few months after his marriage. Her Uncle, Charles V, is also the Holy Roman Emperor in charge of Naples, Spain, the Hapsburg Empire and the Netherlands. He is making threatening sounds toward Henry VIII.
More resigns after two years as chancellor, because he cannot, in conscience, take the King’s oath on his “Great Matter,” in which he signs on as not only the head of the empire but the head of the church in England. The play begins in this period. It is written by a playwite, Sheila Lynch Rinear, who grew up in Philadelphia, and summered in Sea Isle, and has 50 plays under her belt. She lives, and teaches in San Antonio, Texas.
“We are just presenting the first reading, of a part of the play.” said Barbara Beitel, Access to Art, Inc. Director.”It begins with a masque, which the king was fond of, and which we cannot produce at the Southern Mansion. This is the beginning, and a taste of what is to come. We are preparing it for a Renaissance festival, and a full play later on. We had Dr. Burt Greenspan give us a wonderful talk about the Italian Renaissance in 2012. He taught violin, and also music history at Rowan for years. He has retired and is performing as a violinist with the Naples, Florida Opera Company and with symphonies in that area.” Beitel said.
The event is underwritten by the NJ State Council of the Arts/Dept. of State, a Partner Agency of the National Endowment for the Arts. The regrant is administered by the Cape May County Division of Culture and Heritage Commission for the County’s Board of Chosen Freeholders. Samuel S. DeVico also supported the play commission.
Tickets are $25. Adults, $20. For seniors and students. Send checks to Access to Art, Inc. 417 E. Pacific Ave., Cape May Court House, N.J. 08210. Call (609) 465-3963 for reservations.
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