Artistic Licence

Three plays by Steve Gooch. Includes Asking Rembrandt, Spanish Walk, and Dark Glory. For purchasing details please see the Publications page.

Asking Rembrandt

Having rubbed most of the Amsterdam establishment the wrong way, with his creditors foreclosing on the loan for his house, and with the Church accusing him of living ‘in sin’ with Hendrickje, you’d think Rembrandt would be grateful for the attentions of the well-connected Jan Six and the odd lucrative commission he can still bring the ageing master’s way. But when Rembrandt asks Six for a loan, and Six asks Rembrandt for a picture, it’s bound to end in tears.

Spanish Walk

Self-styled ‘radical’ poets of the 1930s discover the limits of their political beliefs at a Writers conference in Spain, 1936, when an anarchist street-poet gate-crashes their tightly-organised Party party.

Dark Glory

Alfred Lord Tennyson’s father, though the rector of a delightful church in Lincolnshire, tended to fly into rages, most likely after a drink or two. Alfred himself was prone to seeing visions, and his brother Charles was considered the better poet when they went up to Cambridge and met Arthur Hallam. Hallam was the university whizz-kid of his day and an unexpectedly fierce champion of the young Alfred’s work. His sudden death sent the future poet laureate into morbid brooding, from which he emerged a decade later with the best-selling ‘In Memoriam’ which in one glorious year – along with being made Poet Laureate and marrying the eminently practical Emily – made the Tennyson we know today.