The Parnassus plays are three dramas produced at St John's College, Cambridge, as part of the college's Christmas entertainments towards the end of the 16th century. They are humorous accounts of the adventures of two students, Philomusus and Studioso. The first play The Pilgrimage to Parnassus is an allegory about student life. The other two plays, The Return from Parnassus and The Second Part of the Return from Parnassus, describe the two graduates' unsuccessful attempts to make a living.
Authorship of the plays is uncertain, nor is it known if they were all the work of the same person. John Weever has been suggested as author of the first play; the satirist Joseph Hall has been seen as an influence on—if not the author of—the other two, though recent statistical tests bring Hall's authorship into question. The dramatist John Day has also been proposed as a possible author.
Read more about Parnassus Plays: The Plays, Authorship, Dating and Meaning, Printing History, Performances
Famous quotes containing the words parnassus and/or plays:
“You that do search for every purling spring
Which from the ribs of old Parnassus flows,
And every flower, not sweet perhaps, which grows
Near thereabouts into your poesy wring;
You that do dictionary’s method bring
Into your rhymes, running in rattling rows;”
—Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586)
“[Allegory] should ... be very sparingly practised, lest, whilst the writer plays with his own fancies and diverts himself by cutting the air with his wide spread wings, he should soar out of view of his readers, leaving them in confusion and perplexity to explore his viewless track.”
—Sarah Fielding (1710–1768)