[3] An early draft of the play was written in 1997 at the University of California at Davis during Brenton's term as its Granada Fellow, and performed by MFA students of its Drama Department (with Sarah Pia Anderson directing).

When he enters into an affair with his equally brilliant but disastrously connected student Heloise, his more conservative enemies find just the pretext they need to discredit him and in so doing start a war of ideas.

Abelard, arguing with his teacher William of Champeaux, sets up a new, dialectic philosophical school of his own, which proves popular and is even fashionable at the royal court of France.

Bernard's agents Alberic and Lotholf reveal the affair to Heloise's uncle and surrogate father Fulbert, a canon of Notre Dame, and he is disgusted by it.

Abelard offers to marry Heloise to resolve the situation and remove the disgrace, but she refuses, wanting to be his lover rather than conform to the oppressive norm of medieval marriage.