The Desire of Women




Some years ago a director friend of mine was running a series of workshop sessions on narrative theatre with a group of students, and asked me to write something for them to work on, which combined the qualities of both narrative and theatre. I based the piece I wrote on the same legend Chaucer drew on for The Wife of Bath's Tale in his Canterbury Tales. It's called The Desire of Women, and remains a favourite of mine, possibly because it is a real hybrid of narrative, drama and verse, and, for that reason, a little difficult to pigeon-hole. Maybe that's why it hasn't yet received a proper production, though hope to be staging one myself in the near future.


The entire play is rather long to be read on screen, being some 18 pages or thereabouts.

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Presented in printable Microsoft Word format.

This Play has been downloaded times since September 2003.
Mycenae | Persephone | Medea and The Hero | Thomas the Rhymer | Hieroglyph

The Rhymer Returns | The Hummingbird | The Desire of Women | The Snake and Death

Earth Angels | Poetry | A Folk Tale | Lichfield Cathederal | Toys in the Teachest

All original material Copyright © 2002 David Calcutt.
Any reproduction in full or in part of any item or extract represented herein is forbidden
unless written permission has first been obtained from the originator.