00:00 Exterior
– Bookshop window
c.u.
window display
Poster
for new “Harry Potter” book
c.u.
J.K.Rowling’s name on book cover
Patricia
Cornwell books on shelf
Zadie
Smith books on shelf
Jacquiline
Wilson books on shelf
Sylvia
Plath books on shelf
Wide
– exterior, British Library
Dr.
Elizabeth Clarke entering The British Library
Fragile
manuscript being transported on trolley
Wide
– people walking past “King’s Library”
display
Dr.
Clarke receiving manuscript
Dr
Clarke opens box and extracts manuscript
Dr
Clarke places manuscript on reading desk
c.u.
Jane Seager’s “Translations of the Ten Sibyl’s
Prophesies of the Birth of Christ”
Guide Voice: The female writer is probably more
widely accepted now than she has ever been, certainly in the
western world.
The hugely successful J.K. Rowling regularly tops the publishing
charts but women writers with less magical concerns are also
enjoying widespread sales and appreciation of their work. So
it’s easy to forget that it hasn’t always been that
way.
Now a collection of works by women writers, who have waited some
400 years for that editor’s acceptance slip, has been
compiled by researchers at the University of Warwick, working with
colleagues from Birmingham and London.
The book, "Early Modern Women's Manuscript Poetry,"
brings together the work of 14 women who were writing between 1589
and 1706. Women such as Jane Seagar, who produced this exquisite
book, now housed in the British Library.
00:51 SOT: Dr. Elizabeth Clarke, Reader in English,
University of Warwick –
“That manuscript was a present to Queen Elizabeth the
First. It was a present from someone on the fringes of court,
someone who wasn’t very well known, someone who was probably
trying to earn themselves a place in court by impressing the queen.
It’s unusual and yet it shows so many skills gathered into
one artefact. She produced several poems she’s translated
them into shorthand which is brand new in 1589 when she wrote that
manuscript, she was showing off her skill as one of the newest
puzzles around, everyone was fascinated by shorthand, they called
it ‘Charactery’ so she showed off her skill in
that”.
01:37 c.u.
Inner pages of manuscript
Pan
across pages to show shorthand
Tilt
down manuscript
Exterior
– Tower of London
c.u.Tower
Tilt
down to show Traitors Gate
Page
showing “Ye Sons of England whose unquenched flame”
poem
Guide Voice: Jane Seagar’s book is a
beautiful work of art probably designed to gain her favour with her
Queen, but other authors in the collection have darker reasons for
their writing. Lucy Hutchinson was born in the Tower of London in
1620, the daughter of the Tower’s Lieutenant – but in a
cruel twist of fate her husband was imprisoned there some 40 years
later and actually died in prison, giving rise to her elegies and
epitaphs for him.
Various shots – Tower of London
02:04 SOT: Dr. Clarke (reading from the
book) –
……”Where only rocks for Innocent blood shed
mourne
While humane hearts to flintie quarries turne
Now read this Stone doth Close up the darker Cave
Where liberty Sleepes in her Champions grave”.
02:24 Wide
of Dr Clarke sat at reading desk in British Library
c.u.
poem by Hester Pulter on childbirth
Pan
across poem on Marriage, by Anne Southwell
Wide
of Anne Southwell poem
Guide Voice: It’s social commentary like
this that is particularly interesting about these manuscript
writings. The majority of our accounts of society at this time come
through the work of male writers, but this book gives our social
history a female voice for the first time.
And it’s a voice that is prepared to offer some
criticism!
02:41 SOT: Dr. Clarke -
“What’s extraordinary about it is that it’s
just a little bit feisty. The ideology of the day ‘men are
the heads of women’ as Anne Southwell, who wrote the
poem admits, men are our heads but she’s protesting
that men would prefer women to be very low down so they could be
kicked about and she’s protesting about that. She’s
saying ‘come on, women are very much valued in the Bible so
men have been asleep all this time if they think that women should
not be valued.”
03:15 Wide
of Anne Southwell poem “All Married Men…..”
Guide Voice: So, are we seeing in this writing
an early example of feminism?
03:19 SOT: Dr. Clarke –
“It’s very difficult to talk about feminism in the
early modern period; it’s so alien to their whole way of
looking at life. However if you say that one aspect of feminism is
that you listen to women - that you care about how the world looks
from their perspective - if you want to hear about their
experience of life then I suppose it is
“feminist”, in inverted comas, to write in
the way these women did and to give their whole sex a
voice.”
03:49
Lucy Hutchinson Manuscript
reproduced in book
c.u.
Hester Pulter manuscript reproduced in book
Wide
of above
Front
cover “Early modern women’s manuscript
poetry”
Guide Voice: For many women around the world
the struggle to have their voice heard goes on – after 400
years, the women writers in this collection of manuscript poetry
finally achieve the notice they deserve.
04:02 End
of Cut
Additional Material
c.u. Jane Seager’s original manuscript book – push
in to cover detail
Wide – exterior Tower of London
Exterior – British Library
Tilt up from reading desk to show Dr. Clarke
04:32 End
