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    Brontë (NHB Modern Plays)
    Brontë (NHB Modern Plays)
    Brontë (NHB Modern Plays)
    Ebook99 pages1 hour

    Brontë (NHB Modern Plays)

    By Polly Teale

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    About this ebook

    A compelling literary detective story about the turbulent lives of the Bronte sisters - dramatised by Polly Teale and Shared Experience, the team behind After Mrs Rochester and Jane Eyre.
    In 1845, Branwell Bronte returns home in disgrace, plagued by his addictions. As he descends into alcoholism and insanity, bringing chaos to the household, his sisters write...
    Polly Teale's extraordinary play evokes the real and imagined worlds of the Brontes, as their fictional characters come to haunt their creators.
    Bronte was produced by award-winning theatre company Shared Experience in 2010, in a co-production with the Watermill Theatre, Newbury, directed by Nancy Meckler.
    Shared Experience are acclaimed the world over for their powerful, visually-charged productions.
    'Breathtaking... a rare feat of theatrical imagining' - Evening Standard
    'Ambitious, intelligent and absorbing' - Financial Times
    'Soars on the wings of imagination' - Daily Telegraph
    'Riveting... a tantalising glimpse through the window of a uniquely haunted family home' - The Times
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherNick Hern Books
    Release dateDec 4, 2014
    ISBN9781780015385
    Brontë (NHB Modern Plays)

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      Book preview

      Brontë (NHB Modern Plays) - Polly Teale

      ACT ONE

      The stage looks like a rehearsal room towards the end of rehearsals. Objects from the world of the play silted up around the room along with various pieces of Victorian furniture. Everywhere there are books. Some old. Some modern books about the Brontës.

      While the audience enters the actors are already onstage wearing modern rehearsal clothes. They will change into Victorian costumes during the Prologue.

      They are sitting at a table studying books about the Brontës.

      EMILY. How did it happen?

      ANNE. How was it possible?

      CHARLOTTE. Three Victorian spinsters living in isolation on the Yorkshire moors.

      EMILY (examining a picture in a book). It’s hard to believe that they really dressed like this, for walking on the moors, carrying in coal, scrubbing floors.

      ANNE. Writing books.

      CHARLOTTE. Here’s the painting done by their brother Branwell, now hanging in the National Portrait Gallery.

      She takes a biography from the actor playing BRANWELL BRONTË and looks at the cover, on which is BRANWELL’s painting of the sisters.

      There is a smudge in the middle where he has painted himself out. She looks too fat.

      The actors peer at the portrait.

      ANNE. Too miserable.

      EMILY. Too pinched.

      CHARLOTTE. Not that they were pretty. Not at all.

      ANNE. Their lives would have been different if they had been. They would have married.

      EMILY. Died in childbirth.

      CHARLOTTE. Or had lots of children and never written another word.

      ANNE. Perhaps the odd recipe, a letter here and there, but nothing we – (To the audience.) would know about.

      CHARLOTTE. They would be gone.

      ANNE. Lost.

      CHARLOTTE. Sunk without trace.

      EMILY. In the deep dark river that claims us all.

      Beat.

      ANNE. We have no mother. Can none of us remember her. That’s why our books are peopled by orphans. Children abandoned.

      EMILY. Lost.

      CHARLOTTE. Alone.

      ANNE. We cannot imagine what it would have been like to have kisses and cuddles. A woman’s soft touch. Her warmth and forgiveness.

      CHARLOTTE. Perhaps that is why we’re so uncommonly close. So uneasy with strangers.

      ANNE. Perhaps that is why we have little patience with children. Why we are utterly ill-suited to the only job available to us.

      ALL. Governess.

      ANNE. There are stories about our mother, things we’ve been told. A bird was once trapped in the house. It flew again and again at the window. Broke its wing, its beak, its leg. She kept it and nursed it back to life.

      CHARLOTTE. No mother. Can’t remember. Not a word, not a look. Not a smile.

      EMILY. We were lucky.

      CHARLOTTE. Lucky?

      ANNE. How so?

      EMILY. She was not there to criticise. To insist on ladylike manners, pretty clothes and gentle speech. To organise tea parties with eligible men. We were allowed to read whatever we found. Whatever we could get hold of.

      The actor playing PATRICK BRONTË brings a pile of books and places them on the table. Leaves. CHARLOTTE, EMILY and ANNE read the spines.

      Milton. Byron. Shelley.

      CHARLOTTE. Scott. Homer. Shakespeare. Brontë. Patrick Brontë… Yes. (Pause.) Our name printed on the spine in beautiful curling

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