Baudonivia Don't Know 'Nun about Radegund

The year is 600 CE in a sleepy village in rural France. The curtain opens to show the inside of the local inn. Townspeople mill about, obviously enjoying the end of the work week. STAGE CENTER, VENANTIUS FORTUNATUS sits alone at a table on which several scrolls and a few bits of parchment are stacked haphazardly. He drinks casually from a cup of wine, another cup sits untouched across the table. VENANTIUS is clothed in modest brown robes and occasionally glances towards the door. Thin, bookish, with a wan expression, waits anxiously for someone to come through the door.

ENTER BAUDONIVIA STAGE LEFT. Dressed in the robes and habit of a nun she hurries to the table and sits down abruptly. Her habit sits crookedly on her head. Visibly frustrated, she grabs the second cup of wine and drinks deeply.

VENANTIUS: (amused) Long day, Baudonivia?

BAUDONIVIA: You don’t know the half of it. King Clothar commissioned me to write a brief history of his late wife, Radegund, and I’m having an impossible time completing it. That’s why I asked to meet up-- you’re such a distinguished writer, how did you convey Queen Radegund’s saintly characteristics without coming off as insincere in the version of her life you just completed? I don’t want to just say that Radegund was a holy woman, I want to show it!

VENANTIUS: Ah, I see. I’ve just completed my own version of the life of Queen Radegund. I found that her saintliness was most easily conveyed through interesting anecdotes telling of her many good works. In this way, the readers can learn for themselves the ways in which Queen Radegund fulfilled her queenly duties.

BAUDONIVIA: Oh! (pauses to refill her glass) That’s easy. I’ll just write about times like when she held a dinner in the great hall last harvest.

VENANTIUS: No, you must be a little more subtle than that. Take for example the way in which I use Queen Radegund’s clothing as a tool to demonstrate her saintly virtues. One of the Queen’s most important jobs is to care for her people through charitable works and to love God with all her heart. I emphasized in my history of Queen Radegund all of the times that she gave up her beautiful clothes so that she might give them to the poor. In her mind, they needed them more than she. She chose instead to wear a coarse hair cloth, subjecting herself to constant discomfort.

BAUDONIVIA: Well sure, it’s good to emphasize Queen Radegund’s charity, but she gave generously in many ways. Why focus on her clothes rather than the many times she donated money or fed the poor? I feel like it would be better to share with the reader situations when she led her servants to burn down a shrine to the devil or the times when God appeared to her in visions.

VENANTIUS: (somewhat impatiently) As a modern queen, it’s important to be beautifully dressed in rich clothes- it’s one of the ways in which the Queen “plays her part” and signals her high status. (gestures toward a beggar sitting on the tavern floor) It’s a very difficult thing to give up comfortable clothes and instead put on a hair cloth.(while gesturing toward a painting on the wall of Radegund) It’s all the more difficult to eschew the comforts of daily life when you are the Queen. This makes her sacrifice greater and is more pleasing to God. She sets a good example for us all.

BAUDONIVIA: But don’t you think you’re obsessing over her clothes? (scoffs) You’re reducing the queen of the Frankish people to the status of a particularly generous patron of the, the... Goodwill Store at Poitiers!

VENANTIUS: (taken aback) That’s such a silly thing to say. If I focused only on Queen Radegund’s official actions, she would be indistinguishable from every other Queen in history! Think about it: Esther, Helen, Balthild, Brunehilde, each and every one of these women gave charitably and cared for their people. (hotly) How many of them gave the clothes on their back to the poor man sitting outside of their palace?

BAUDONIVIA: Who cares? That woman had more money than she knew what to do with- she could never give enough clothes for it to actually make a dent in the royal treasury! What certainly DID make a dent was when Queen Radegund left the king so that she could pursue the life of a nun. Where is that in your precious history of Queen Radegund?

VENANTIUS stands up abruptly, shoving his chair back. VENANTIUS and BAUDONIVIA stare at each other for some time, then VENANTIUS says, sternly

VENANTIUS: The fact remains that clothing is something that any person can understand. To a prince or a pauper, changing the way you dress to humble yourself before God and to renounce all worldly pleasures is one of the most tangible ways I can convey the sort of sacrifices Queen Radegund made so that she might be closer to God. (venomously) I wouldn’t expect an unlearned person as narrow of understanding as yourself to understand!

VENANTIUS tosses a few coins on the table and gathers his papers. He turns to go, and before he walks out of the inn he takes off his cloak, glares back at BAUDONIVIA, and offers it to the beggar, exiting STAGE LEFT.

END SCENE.