"Placing" One Flea Spare

It takes a good deal of research to write a historical piece that rings as true as One Flea Spare, and playwright Naomi Wallace did some real research.  At the end of the text of her play is a 'Select Bibliography' where she cites among other books, A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe and The Illustrated Pepys: Extracts from the Diary.  These two books I highlight because I've read selections from each in a couple classes I took in college, and they both illustrate vividly the way things were in the time, though one is fiction (Defoe's Plague Year).  

At the beginning of the play (and written in our playbill) it states the time, place, and setting* of the action in the play. It's 1665 in "a comfortable house in Axe Yard, off King Street, Westminster, London."  Curious to know whether this was a real street, I went to the internet and immediately checked out Google Maps.  (I had done this once before with the latitude and longitude given by the Stage Manager in Our Town, and found that Grover's Corners was much like Atlantis, as its coordinates placed it in the ocean, not in New Hampshire at all.)  To my delight, I found a resource that had the historical placement of where the Snelgraves' home might have been! 

See the little red A? Yeah, that's about where the Snelgraves' house would've been.

"Axe Yard was a cul-de-sac right in the heart of Westminster. There were 25 houses along the length of the Yard and the larger ones were owned by wealthy well connected families, it had a narrow entrance into King Street next to the Axe Tavern, and was only a short walk away from King Street gate into Whitehall Palace [...] If you turned right on leaving Axe Yard, a short walk would bring you to Westminster Palace, Parliament and the offices of the Exchequer where [Samuel Pepys] then worked under George Downing." -- from: http://www.pepysdiary.com/p/102.php#discussion

I found this information fascinating as it not only connected the fictional Snelgraves socially to the real Pepys in my head, but it also gave me a nice visual as to where geographically they fit in the city.  Having looked back at that, it made Snelgrave's line really click into context for me, as Samuel Pepys had indeed worked for the Navy Board. Says Snelgrave, "I know a bit about the waters myself. I work for the Navy Board, just down the lane, on Seething. My friend Samuel and I, we control the largest commercial venture in the country, hmm. The Royal Dockyards."  According to Wikipedia, "On the Navy Board, Pepys proved to be a more able and efficient worker than colleagues in higher positions: a fact that often annoyed Pepys, and provoked much harsh criticism in his diary."

And while we're talking about similarities between Mr. Snelgrave and Samuel Pepys, here's another: having their way with the servants.  From Wikipedia: "The most dramatic of these encounters was with Deborah Willet, a young woman engaged as a companion for Elisabeth Pepys [his wife]. On 25 October 1668 Pepys was surprised by his wife whilst embracing Deborah Willet: he writes that his wife 'coming up suddenly, did find me imbracing the girl con my hand sub su coats; and endeed I was with my main in her cunny. I was at a wonderful loss upon it and the girl also....'"  I imagine you got the gist of what Mr. Pepys was saying, but in case you didn't, here's why: "these [liaisons] were chronicled in his diary, often in some detail, and generally using a cocktail of languages (English, French, Spanish and Latin) when relating the intimate details."

If you want more of Pepys' Diary in blog form, check out pepysdiary.com, a blog started in January 2003 by Phil Gyford "that serialised the diary one day each evening together with annotations from public and experts alike.  In December 2003, the blog won the best specialist blog award in The Guardian's Best of British Blogs."   

Neat, right?  I thought so.  What are your thoughts? Do share!

*Next up: Setting One Flea Spare - A series of photos and commentary on bringing the Snelgraves' home into our theatre.