Into Thy Hands is a play about faith, sex, and the translation of the Bible. Set four hundred years ago, it is centred around John Donne and his parallel roles as the first English translator of Galileo, accomplice in the translation of the Song of Solomon, and as the most popular songwriter of the English Court.Set in 1610-11 at the high watermark of the English Renaissance, the play 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.
Industry Reviews
Jonathan Holmes explores the poet's struggle to choose between the church and his carnal desires... A...mesmerising play -- Lauren Paxman * The Stage *
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 *
What is refreshing...is to hear questions of faith being debated in a contemporary play. -- Michael Billington * Guardian *
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 *
