Book description
'For God's sake hold thy tongue and let me love!' Into Thy Hands takes
place in 1610-11 at the high watermark of the English Renaissance and
charts the beginning of an English project that would come to dominate
the next three centuries. John Donne stood at the nexus of these
developments. At various times politician, soldier, poet, musician,
lawyer, courtier, theologian and cleric, and as a man born into one of
the most distinguished English Catholic families only to die as one of
its most renowned Protestants, he lived lives as most shades of English
identity. He was also intimately involved with three great English
innovations that came to dominate the subsequent life of the country:
the Anglican church, epitomised by the King James Bible (1611); the
scientific enlightenment, prompted by the work of Francis Bacon and the
appearance of Galileo's work in English (also 1611); and the great
artistic flourishing in theatre, poetry and music. This play is about
the collision of those worlds. Jonathan Holmes explores the poet's
struggle to choose between the church and his carnal desires...
A...mesmerising play -- Lauren Paxman The Stage 20110603 Into Thy Hands,
Jonathan Holmes's passionately intellectual play about the metaphysical
love poet and, later, Dean of St Paul's, John Donne ... The dialogue is
an adroitly inflected mix of the Jacobean and the modern -- Paul Taylor
Independent 20110609 What is refreshing...is to hear questions of faith
being debated in a contemporary play. -- Michael Billington Guardian
20110603 Holmes's text knits Donne's own writings to dialogue of his own
making, keeping to the playfully wordy idiom of the period. The result
is undeniably dense, but articulated with such a sure sense of rhythm
and purpose that its dramatic intent is never less than clear ... Funny
and sexy without feeling forced or intrusive, the joy of Into Thy Hands
is its shameless blurring of registers into the naturalistic muddle of
life. We make real inroads into the philosophy of translation, the role
and impact of the vernacular Bible, the moral issues of the church
patronage system of the seventeenth century, but we also get a vivid
portrait of a marriage, of the isolation of the woman of independent
means and the vulnerability of ageing beauty. It's a delight to see
theatre so utterly sure of itself, and hear writing so unapologetically
scholarly. -- Alexandra Coghlan The Arts Desk 20110605 Dr Jonathan
Holmes is a writer, director and founder of arts organisation The
Jericho House.
