Bewnans Ke - History

History

Bewnans Ke survives in one manuscript, NLW MS 23849D, now held at the National Library of Wales. The play has no title in the text; the National Library gave it its modern name after consulting scholars of Cornish. The manuscript had been in the personal collection of J. E. Caerwyn Williams, chair of Irish at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. After Williams' death in 1999, his widow Gwen Williams donated his papers to the National Library in 2000, and the previously unknown play was identified by Graham Thomas during the cataloging process. Thomas publicized his discovery in the National Library of Wales Journal in 2002, and the manuscript was subsequently repaired and studied.

The manuscript was evidently created in the second half of the 16th century, by a scribe copying a document dating perhaps to around 1500. Several leaves are missing, including the entire beginning and ending, and in two places the copyist complains about the poor quality of the original. The provenance is entirely unknown, but the language is Middle Cornish akin to that of Beunans Meriasek, the only other surviving Cornish play concerning a saint's life. This and other similarities between the plays suggest that both were composed around the same time and in the same milieu, most probably at Glasney College in Penryn. If this is correct, Bewnans Ke may have been performed in the still-extant "Playing Place" in the nearby village of that name, where Beunans Meriasek is known to have been performed.

The play clearly relies on traditional material about Kea, which is known to have been circulated in a Latin hagiography written as early as the 12th century. This work is lost, but a French translation published in Albert le Grand's Lives of the Saints of Brittany in 1633 survives. This French Life of Kea has much correspondence with the Cornish text, and has been used to fill in gaps in the action. Bewnans Ke was initially thought to represent two plays, as in its incomplete state it appears to consist of two distinct sections: one on the deeds of Kea and the other on the doings of King Arthur, in which Kea is not mentioned. However, comparison with the Life shows that Arthurian material had been added to the saint's story at an early period. This occurs in places that would be missing in the play, leading scholars to regard it as a single work.