Parnassus Plays - The Plays

The Plays

The first part, The Pilgrimage to Parnassus, describes allegorically the four year journey to Parnassus of the two students, i.e. their progress, through the university course of logic, rhetoric, etc., and the temptations set before them by their meeting with Madido, a drunkard, Stupido, a puritan who hates learning, Amoretto, a lover, and Ingenioso, a disappointed student.

The play was doubtless originally 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 adventures 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. They again meet Ingenioso, who is making a scanty living by the press, but is on the search for a patron. They also meet as a new character, the sensation loving Luxurioso. All four now leave the university for London, while a draper, a tailor and a tapster lament their unpaid bills. Philomusus and Studioso find work respectively as a sexton and a tutor in a merchant's family, while Luxurioso becomes a writer and singer of ballads. In the meanwhile Ingenioso has met with a patron, a foolish poetry-lover named Gullio, for whom he composes amorous verses in the style of Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakespeare, the last alone being to the patron's satisfaction. Gullio is portrayed as a great admirer of "sweet Mr. Shakespeare". He says he will obtain a picture of him for his study and that "I'll worship sweet Mr Shakespeare and to honour him will lay his Venus and Adonis under my pillow, as we read of one - I do not well remember his name, but I'm sure he was a king - slept with Homer under his bed's head".

A further sequel, The Second Part of the Return from Parnassus, Or the Scourge of Simony, is a more ambitious, and from every point of view more interesting, production than the two earlier pieces. In it we again meet with Ingenioso, now become a satirist. On the excuse of discussing a recently-published collection of extracts from contemporary poetry, John Bodenham's Belvedere, he briefly criticizes, or rather characterizes, a number of writers of the day, among them being Spenser, Constable, Michael Drayton, John Davies, John Marston, Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, Shakespeare, and Thomas Nashe; the last of whom is referred to as dead. It is impossible here to detail the plot of the play, and it can only be said that Philomusus and Studioso, having tried all means of earning a living, abandon any further attempt to turn their learning to profit and determine to become shepherds. Several new characters are introduced in this part, real persons such as John Danter, the printer, Richard Burbage and William Kempe, the actors, as well as such abstractions as Furor Poeticus and Phantasma. The second title of the piece, The Scourge of Simony, is justified by a sub-plot dealing with the attempts of one Academico to obtain a living from an ignorant country patron, Sir Roderick, who, however, presents it, on the recommendation of his son Amoretto, who has been bribed, to a non-university man Immerito.