LOST PLAYS & THE ROSE
PROFESSOR DAVID MCINNIS
The vast majority of plays once performed at The Rose Playhouse are now lost, but what can they still reveal about the business of Elizabethan play-making and the audiences who watched them?
The Admiral's Men, The Rose’s leading acting company, seem to have had approximately 235 plays in their repertory between the years 1594 and 1603, according to the business records of The Rose’s owner, Philip Henslowe – yet just 24 of these have survived to the present day.
The excavations of playhouse foundations by archaeologists has yielded exciting new insights into playing and playgoing, and likewise the excavation of lost plays – their narratives, subject matter, genre, and other features besides the actual playtexts themselves – can help us understand and appreciate playhouse activity from another angle.
Join Professor David McInnis, editor of the Lost Plays Database, to discover how plays become lost and how theatre historians can work with their absence productively, as he explores a handful of particularly tantalising lost plays from The Rose’s repertoire.
BIOGRAPHY
David McInnis is Professor of Shakespeare and Early Modern Drama at the University of Melbourne, and is Editor of Shakespeare Quarterly (with Vanessa I. Corredera and Arthur L. Little, Jr). He is the author of Shakespeare and Lost Plays (Cambridge University Press, 2021), two collections of essays on lost plays (Palgrave 2014, 2020), and is co-founder and editor of the online Lost Plays Database. He is currently editing Timon of Athens for the Arden Shakespeare 4th series.
PLEASE NOTE: The talk begins an hour later than usual for our Monday online talks, at 7.30pm GMT. A recording of the event will be made available afterwards on request for a limited time to those who have purchased a ticket but who – for whatever reason – cannot attend live on the day.
PRESENTED IN COLLABORATION WITH LITERATURE WORKS AND THE PAGE OF PLYMOUTH PROJECT
Literature Works is a charity and an Arts Council England National Portfolio organisation in Southwest England.
The Page of Plymouth project is centred on the lost play by Ben Jonson & Thomas Dekker (performed at The Rose in 1599), and explores stories about gender, justice and ordinary lives in Plymouth both then and now.
The vast majority of plays once performed at The Rose Playhouse are now lost, but what can they still reveal about the business of Elizabethan play-making and the audiences who watched them?
The Admiral's Men, The Rose’s leading acting company, seem to have had approximately 235 plays in their repertory between the years 1594 and 1603, according to the business records of The Rose’s owner, Philip Henslowe – yet just 24 of these have survived to the present day.
The excavations of playhouse foundations by archaeologists has yielded exciting new insights into playing and playgoing, and likewise the excavation of lost plays – their narratives, subject matter, genre, and other features besides the actual playtexts themselves – can help us understand and appreciate playhouse activity from another angle.
Join Professor David McInnis, editor of the Lost Plays Database, to discover how plays become lost and how theatre historians can work with their absence productively, as he explores a handful of particularly tantalising lost plays from The Rose’s repertoire.
BIOGRAPHY
David McInnis is Professor of Shakespeare and Early Modern Drama at the University of Melbourne, and is Editor of Shakespeare Quarterly (with Vanessa I. Corredera and Arthur L. Little, Jr). He is the author of Shakespeare and Lost Plays (Cambridge University Press, 2021), two collections of essays on lost plays (Palgrave 2014, 2020), and is co-founder and editor of the online Lost Plays Database. He is currently editing Timon of Athens for the Arden Shakespeare 4th series.
PLEASE NOTE: The talk begins an hour later than usual for our Monday online talks, at 7.30pm GMT. A recording of the event will be made available afterwards on request for a limited time to those who have purchased a ticket but who – for whatever reason – cannot attend live on the day.
PRESENTED IN COLLABORATION WITH LITERATURE WORKS AND THE PAGE OF PLYMOUTH PROJECT
Literature Works is a charity and an Arts Council England National Portfolio organisation in Southwest England.
The Page of Plymouth project is centred on the lost play by Ben Jonson & Thomas Dekker (performed at The Rose in 1599), and explores stories about gender, justice and ordinary lives in Plymouth both then and now.
Monday 23 March 2026 7:30 PM - 8:45 PM (UTC+00)
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