Parnassus plays

Francis Bacon in his essay "Of Seditions and Troubles" pointed to a 16th-century problem – universities were producing more scholars than there were opportunities for them.

The University Wits – Lily, Marlowe, Green, Peele, Nashe and Lodge – were scholars who found employment in theatre, not perhaps their first choice, but there was little else for them.

[4][5][6] It has been said that this trilogy of plays "in originality and breadth of execution, and in complex relationship to the academic, literary, theatrical and social life of the period, ranks supreme among the extant memorials of the university stage",[7] and that they are "among the most inexplicably neglected key documents of Shakespeare's age".

The first play was certainly intended to stand alone, but the favour with which it was received led to the writing of a sequel, The Return from Parnassus, which deals with the struggles of the two students after the completion of their studies at the university, and shows them discovering by bitter experience of how little pecuniary value their learning is.

[9][10][11] The trilogy of the Parnassus plays can be seen as a sustained questioning of the worth of a humanist education, and as a consideration of the employment crisis that faced graduates at the end of the Elizabethan period.

[12] The plays are lively and amusing, and contain a sense of taking stock of the writer's place in society at the turn of the century.

They are neglected by academic scholarship, and not greatly appreciated as plays in their own right, but they are known as a source for references to Shakespeare and Jonson, and for other allusions they contain.

[13] An old farmer, Consiliodorus, gives advice to his son, Philomusus, and his nephew, Studioso, as the two young men are about to begin their journey to Parnassus.

The first place the two young men travel through is the mountainous land of Logique on their way to the island of Dialectica, where they meet a poet, Madido.

Next, in the land of Rhetorique, Philomusus and Studioso overtake a character named Stupido, who set out on the same pilgrimage ten years ago, but has given up and now follows trivial pursuits.

Philomusus and Studioso then encounter the lover, Amaretto, who encourages them to leave their pilgrimage, and instead linger in the land of Poetry and dally with wenches.

Consiliodorus exits as Philomusus and Studioso enter, both bemoaning that since leaving Parnassus fate hasn't been kind, and the world is not a fruitful place for scholars.

Ingenioso has found a kind of patron in Gullio, a character that is partly based on Thomas Nashe's portrait of "an upstart" in his pamphlet Pierce Penniless.

In the next scene, Consiliodorus, father to Philomusus, uncle to Studioso, who funded their journey to Parnassus meets with the carrier and horse-back messenger Leonarde.

Before the play begins, Studioso and Philomusus travelled to Rome with the expectation of becoming rich, but they discovered that expatriate Englishmen don't live as well as they had hoped.

They establish a medical practice in London, with Philomusus masquerading as a fashionable French doctor, but they end that charade in time to avoid arrest.

Needing employment, Academico finds his old friend from college, Amaretto, whose father, Sir Raderick, has a position as a parson to offer.

"[22] Just such a troupe of low-born actors is described in The Return to Parnassus; the Scourge of Simony, as they might be seen from the point-of-view of competitive and envious young scholars: England affords those glorious vagabonds That carried earst their fardels on their backes, Coursers to ride on through the gazing streetes, Sooping it in their glaring Satten sutes, And Pages to attend their Maisterships: With mouthing words that better wits have framed, They purchase lands, and now Esquiers are namde.

A tone of bitter mockery is established as Philomusus and Studiosus, out of desperation, audition for the professional stage, and are judged by Richard Burbage and Will Kemp, two important members of Shakespeare's company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, who find humor in the deficiencies of scholars not only as actors but also as dramatists: KEMPE: The slaves are somewhat proud, and besides it is a good sport in a part to see them never speak in their walk, but at the end of the stage, just as though in walking with a fellow we should never speak but at a stile, a gate, or a ditch, where a man can go no further….

This well-known passage is bitterly ironic: The author of the Parnassus plays is holding up to scorn – for an academic audience – the opinions of two illiterate fools, Burbage and Kempe, who think that Metamorphosis is a writer, and that their colleague, Shakespeare, puts the university playwrights to shame.

[23] The audition piece Philomusus is asked to perform is taken from the opening monologue of Shakespeare's play, Richard III: "Now is the winter of our discontent, made glorious summer by this son of York."

[24][25] In the second play, The Return from Parnasus, the character named Gullio, who is lovesick and a fool, is mocked for his worshipful devotion to "pure Shakspeare and shreds of poetry that he hath gathered at the theaters."

His sweeter verse contaynes hart throbbing line, Could but a graver subject him content Without loves foolish lazy languishment.

[28] It is thought that by the time the final part was written the author may have more or less identified Ingenioso with Nashe, though the character was not originally conceived with this intention.

Of course Shakespeare never attended university, but for the students there might be some satiric pleasure in imagining such a character attempting Cambridge, meeting failure, and in the end being forced to return to the country life from whence he came, as occurs in the plays.

The courtier Gullio is not only a character in the play but is used to satirize Shakespeare's patron the Earl of Southampton, who also attended St. John's.

[34] The third play, The Return from Parnassus; the Scourge of Simony, was licensed and entered into the Stationers' Register in 1605 by Owen Gwyn: Oct’.

The retourne from Pernassus or the scourge of Si- mony publiquely Acted by the students in St Johns College in Cambridge.

The handwritten manuscripts of the first two plays consist of twenty folio leaves, and were written imperfectly by a copyist who may have had trouble at times reading his original.

Study of the handwritten manuscript of the third play, owned by James Halliwell-Phillipps, has helped to correct a number of errors that exist in the early printed editions.