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Mary Magdalene: A Play in Three Acts

Chapter 3: ACT I
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About This Book

The play follows a woman with a troubled past whose presence in a Roman-ruled town provokes moral outrage, intimate entanglements, and political tension. Across three acts, public condemnation, private encounters, and a decisive crisis expose competing claims of punishment, compassion, and authority. A messianic figure intervenes to halt communal violence, while the woman faces a wrenching choice that could either imperil or save that figure depending on whether she sacrifices herself for a Roman official. Themes of redemption, social hypocrisy, the limits of law and mercy, and the individual’s struggle between desire and duty are developed in evocative domestic and civic settings.

ACT I

(The gardens of Annœus Silanus at Bethany. A Roman terrace. A quincunx. Marble benches, porticoes, statues. In the centre, a basin with a fountain. Arbours. Orange-trees and laurel-trees in stone vases. A balustrade on the right and left, overlooking the valley. A balustrade at the back, open at the middle to give access to a walk lined with plane-trees and statues and ending in a thick hedge of laurels which closes the garden.)