Celestial Rock and Other Republican Plays

Freedom fighter Tom Paine was threatened with the noose in England, the guillotine in France, and ostracism in the USA, all because he wrote books - notably Common Sense, which toppled monarchies, and The Age of Reason, which challenged established religion. Paine was one of a cluster of 17th/18th century republican writers and activists whose pens changed the world. But who also paid a cruel price for it. John Bunyan (Pilgrim’s Progress) spent twelve years in jail (saved by Celestial Rock!); feminist Quarker leader Margaret Fell, did seven years; preacher James Naylor was tortured to death; even the creator of Paradis Lost, John Milton, just escaped with his life; famed satirist Daniel Defoe (Robinson Crusoe) was placed in the pillory and bankrupted; rebel naval leader Richard Parker was hanged from the yard arm; French dramatist and revolutionary Olympia de Gourges was guillotined in Paris. But their ideas and example survive to this very day. These libertarian ’underdogs and troublemakers’ appear in these pages. Read their stories, then perform them!