The Court Must Have a Queen - an original new play by Ade Solanke
- Submitting institution
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University of Greenwich
- Unit of assessment
- 27 - English Language and Literature
- Output identifier
- 23771
- Type
- A - Authored book
- DOI
-
-
- Publisher
- Playdead Press
- ISBN
- 9781910067895
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of publication
- -
- Year of publication
- 2020
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- The Court Must Have a Queen was a play commissioned by Historic Royal Palaces. It was performed almost 200 times in situ at Hampton Court 29 June – 2 September 2018. Solanke took the opportunity to explore how to communicate, in an accessible and attractive way, Black presence as central rather than marginal to British history. Keen to be historically accurate as well as accessible, Solanke mobilised both the archival and material resources of Hampton Court, secondary materials and interviews with historians such as Miranda Kauffman, Onyeka Nubia and Michael Ohajuru to devise a script based on the real-life John Blanke, a Moorish musician at the court of Henry VIII. Blanke is the first person of African descent for whom historians have both an image and a name, and the production was the first professionally-produced play at a national institution featuring him. Solanke’s play places Blanke in the context of Tudor European realpolitik, where he helps Cromwell seal the deal regarding Henry’s marriage to Anne of Cleves -- a plot that also allowed Solanke to engage the question of Britain’s relationship to Europe. The insights Solanke sought to communicate were not only that Black people, for a long time excluded from official histories, have been an intrinsic part of British culture for centuries, but, importantly, how the status of Africans was higher before the slave trade, with African artists being sought after and paid for their art. The play enables an alternative and positive set of future possibilities based on Solanke’s excavation and narration of the past, and engages audiences in expanding and rethinking in British history.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
