Myrna Combellack – författare

Vitality & joy of life are the keynotes to this new translation of the 16th century Cornish language play, Beunans Meriasek. In it, Camborne''s noble patron saint, Meriasek, is sent to school, refuses marriage & all worldly considerations, embarking instead on a priestly career of such piety that it ends in a bishopric of immense wealth and grandeur of the kind that he had studiously worked to avoid all his life.Meanwhile in Rome, eight centuries earlier, the pagan emperor Constantine is stricken with leprosy, only to be cured by the outlawed Christian pope, Silvester, resulting in the Christian conversion of an empire. Black masses, slain dragons and the Duke of Cornwall goes to war in two further plays.This new verse translation was rehearsed & performed at St Paul''s church, Truro, in February 1986 by a medieval mixture of amateur, professional & student actors.Myrna Combellack was Academic Secretary at the Institute of Cornish Studies (Univ of Exeter & Cornwall CC) from 1972 to 1990.

It is spring in Cornwall again. Life is burgeoning in the bleak and muddy pop-up housing estate of Toldhu, where the buildings are sliding down the hillside at an uneven rate and the fast advancing crack in the Artex has opened up a lane to domestic misery.With artful shifts of grammar and syntax, Combellack''s relentless prose contrives the mental maps of people who are cemented to the unforgiving land.''Oddly disturbing.'' This Lacanian post-feminism set in a post-Cornish landscape.

Beunans Meriasek is one of only two surviving medieval saints’ plays in the British Isles, making it of central importance for the study of early vernacular drama. The surviving manuscript was written in the Cornish language near Camborne in Cornwall at the beginning of the sixteenth century, commemorates a Breton saint, and is currently held in the National Library of Wales near the place of its discovery. This important text is therefore not only of interest to scholars of the Celtic languages, medieval drama, and the religious and cultural history of Cornwall—but also to all those in Cornwall, Wales and Brittany fascinated by their historical relationship.No new critical edition of Beunans Meriasek has been published since that of Whitley Stokes in 1872. Since then a great deal of additional information has come to light about its background, authorship, relation to medieval drama in general and the wider historical context. Dr Combellack is well qualified to explain this: her unpublished PhD thesis on the play was completed in 1984 and forms the foundation of this new work, although substantially updated and revised in the light of subsequent developments and discoveries. Also known for a performable verse translation of the play, the author has taken particular care here to provide a literal, highly accurate English version in parallel to the Cornish text. This will make the play accessible to those from other disciplines and indeed to all.