456: Discussing: The Parnassus Plays
Beyond is sponsored by The Malone Society: The permanent utility of original texts This week we haves a chat about The Parnassus Plays, written in Cambridge in the early 1600's by some people. Robert Crighton is joined by the editors of an upcoming edition of the plays for the Revels series, Andrew Hadfield and Neil Rhodes. The plays are available to buy from Manchester University Press now! Andrew Hadfield has taught a variety of undergraduate courses throughout his career at the Universities of Leeds, Ulster, Aberystwyth, Columbia (New York), and Sussex, concentrating on medieval and early modern literature, Irish literature, literary theory and some twentieth-century literature. He has also taught M. A. courses on Spenser; literature, travel writing and colonialism; and Shakespeare, and also has been a visiting professor at the University of Granada (Spain) since 2007 and a fellow of the British Academy and the English Association. Neil Rhodes was a Scholar of St Catherine’s College, Oxford, where he was awarded the degrees of MA and DPhil and was a Newdigate prizewinner. He is currently a Visiting Professor at the University of Granada, and Liverpool Hope University, and joint General Editor with Andrew Hadfield of the MHRA Tudor and Stuart Translations. From 2014-16 he held a Leverhulme Research Fellowship to work on a book entitled Common: The Development of Literary Culture in Sixteenth-Century England, published by Oxford University Press in 2018. His teaching is principally in the fields of English Renaissance literature. Our patrons received this episode in July 2026 - over a three months early! The Beyond Shakespeare Podcast is supported by its patrons – become a patron and you get to choose the plays we work on next. Go to www.patreon.com/beyondshakespeare - or if you'd like to buy us a coffee at ko-fi https://ko-fi.com/beyondshakespeare - or if you want to give us some feedback, email us at admin@beyondshakespeare.org, follow us on Twitter, Facebook & Instagram @BeyondShakes or go to our website: https://beyondshakespeare.org You can also subscribe to our YouTube channel where (most of) our exploring sessions live - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLa4pXxGZFwTX4QSaB5XNdQ The Beyond Shakespeare Podcast is hosted and produced by Robert Crighton. About our sponsors - the Malone Society. The Society was founded in 1906 at the initiative of A.W. Pollard, and for over a century they have published (almost) every year edited volumes of early printed and manuscript texts of both well-known and neglected plays. They also publish collections of documentary material relating to the performance and reception of early drama. Their best-known publications include W.W. Greg’s edition of Sir Thomas More, a collaborative history play, and A.C. Dunstan’s edition of the earliest surviving original play in English to have been written by a woman, Elizabeth Cary’s The Tragedy of Mariam. Their membership is international and open to anyone interested in early drama. Members receive their annual volumes and are able to buy books from their backlist at low prices. In addition to their publications, they support scholarship of early drama through fellowships and research grants, an annual prize for graduate students, and performances and symposia. The Society is named after Edmond Malone, born in Dublin in 1741, a great editor, textual scholar and theatre historian, whose work continues to shape studies in early drama.
