Dramaturg Notes 
Discovering C.S. Lewis
by Carol Ann Suda
Clive Staples Lewis, "Jack" to his friends, was born on the 29th of November, 1898 in Belfast. He was the son of a solicitor and a clergyman's daughter. As a child, he was always surrounded by books, and thanks to his parents' divergent tastes, he was introduced to classical novels, political writings, and the works of Shakespeare and Dickens. Due to a physical defect (a bone defect impeded his use of both thumbs), he was encouraged to use his imagination, which flourished. He could not wield a cricket bat or shop tools, but he could create things with words and ideas.  He was educated mostly in England and won a scholarship to Oxford University in 1916 to study the classics. His studies were interrupted in 1917 by World War I. He enlisted in the army, but was wounded in Arras in 1918. By 1919, Lewis had returned to University College and was very successful. He took Firsts in each of his examinations. In 1925, he was elected Fellow in English Language and Literature at Magdalen College, Oxford. He remained ensconced in a world of scholars.  Lewis enjoyed ongoing and far-reaching conversations with the Inklings, a group of fellow academics. Influenced by their discussions, he converted to Christianity in 1931. His faith influenced every element of his life from then on.  
From 1933 through 1950, Lewis published 16 books, covering genres ranging from essays to fantasies, science fiction to Christian apologetics. In 1936 he was awarded the Hawthornden Prize for The Allegory of Love: A Study of Medieval Tradition. Soon afterward, he achieved world renown with The Screwtape Letters (1942) and Mere Christianity (1952), a collection of war-era broadcast talks that made him an international celebrity.  Lewis published The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (the first of The Chronicles of Narnia) in 1950, the same year he received his first letter from Joy Davidman Gresham. This is where Shadowlands begins. Lewis' future wife had been born Helen Joy Davidman in New York City on April 18, 1915. She earned her Master¹s degree before she was 20. Her first book of poetry, Letter to a Comrade, received the Yale Young Poets Award.  She published her first novel, Anya, at the age of 25. She worked as a screenwriter for MGM. She married William Gresham in 1942, and they had two sons before they divorced, Douglas and David.  By the time he met the American author face to face in 1952, Lewis had written two more books in the Narnia series. He published a new book in the series each of the following years as their relationship progressed, completing the final text (The Last Battle) in 1956, the year they married in a springtime civil ceremony. A second wedding, an Anglican ceremony, took place in March of 1957. Joy Davidman died on July 13, 1960. That year, C.S. Lewis published The Four Loves, an attempt to understand the range and power of love's many forms. The next year, he published A Grief Observed, reflections on the couple's experience. He worked on several books until he died on November 22, 1963 (the same day as John F. Kennedy and Aldous Huxley). The following Friday would have been his sixty-fifth birthday. 

The Land of Shadows
by Marion Reis
C.S. Lewis originally coined our play's title as a hypenated term "Shadow-Lands."  It occurs in the last of his seven children's books known collectively as The Chronicles of Narnia, The Last Battle, published in 1956. The phrase first makes a showing in the title of the final chapter, "Farewell to Shadow-Lands," and then reappears on the novel¹s very last page. Lewis used the phrase to contast our shadowy worldly existence with what he regarded as the more substantial reality of heaven. He appled the phrase in his book The Great Divorce to indicate that people not belonging to heaven are just "ghosts."
William Nicholson¹s Shadowlands uses Lewis' coinage both as a title and as a reccuring conceit. A reference to the term occurs in the opening speech of the play. "For believe me, this world that seems to us so substantial is no more than the shadowlands. Real life has not begun yet." The phrase is also evoked when Joy Davidman recounts her conversion experience. During an emotional crisis she senses an unseen presence nearby.  "There was someone else in the room," she says. "Just for a few seconds, maybe half a minute. But I knew it was a real person. More real than real. So real that everything else was like shadows."
The phrase reccurs in the opening monologue of the second act. "It's at times like these that we have to remind ourselves of the very core of the Christian faith," Lewis states. "There are other worlds than this. This world, that seems so real, is no more than a shadow of the life to come."
There are references further on, too. The shadow motif provides a unifying pattern throughout the play, becoming part of the lovers' intimate language.  The final words of the play, "Only shadows, Joy," are a strong affirmation of belief in the afterlife. It is likely that C.S. Lewis derived the idea of a shadowland from Plato. Book Seven of The Republic contains an allegory of a cave in which human beings live, seeing only shadows dimly projected on the walls by a distant fire. We see the shadows and interpret them as reality. However, if we were to be released into true sunlight‹that is, if we were suddenly able to see what lies beyond human vision‹the glare would make real objects less real. Life in the cave, allegorically life on earth, is limited by our consciousness.  Some Christian thought echoes Plato, considering the tangible objects of this world as imperfectly derived copies of more ideal, heavenly forms. Lewis had certainly encountered the Biblical verses of Hebrews 8:5 and 10:1 which refer to the worship and laws of the old testament as merely "copy" and "shadow" of the newer form of worship and grace brought about by Christ. Applying these concepts of Christian tradition  throughout Shadowlands, we find Jack and Joy experiencing the happiness and trials of this life as mere prelude. Life on earth presents only a dim foretaste of the intense realities awaiting them in the next world. What we know as death opens into an existence in which they will reunite, joining their creator in an eternity of love, caught up in the stormy worldwind of the dynamic Divine Presence that G.K. Chesterton once called, paradoxically, "eternal rest." 

Acknowledgments:
Produced by special arrangement with Samuel French, Inc.
Our gratitude to the staff at the Marion E. Wade Center of Wheaton College for allowing us access to their collection of C.S. Lewis¹ personal belongings.
Pat Sciara graciously allowed us the use of his bicycle during the run.
Nancy Schauer contributed design concepts for which we are grateful.
Thanks to Gregg Valek for creating the magic apple.
Special thanks to Louise Graff and Bill Wilson for dialect help.

Director’s Note