Парнасские пьесы: Университетская жизнь и судьба выпускников XVI века.

The Parnassus plays are three satiric comedies, or full length academic dramas, each divided into five acts. They date from between 1598 and 1602. They were performed in London by students for an audience of students as part of the Christmas festivities of St John's College at Cambridge University. It is not known who wrote them. The titles of the three plays are
The Pilgrimage to Parnassus
The Return from Parnassus
The Return from Parnassus: Or the Scourge of Simony
The second and third plays are sometimes referred to as Part One and Part Two of The Return from Parnassus. The trilogy raises an Elizabethan question: After college — what comes next? 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. Their great education tended to discourage them from taking up the humble trades of their fathers. The Parnassus plays may not provide a solution, but they at least illustrated the fears of such ambitious young scholastic dreamers. For the most part, the plays follow the experiences of two students, Philomusus and Studioso. The first play tells the story of two pilgrims on a journey to Parnassus. The plot is an allegory understood to represent the story of two students progressing through the traditional course of education known as the trivium. The accomplishment of their education is represented by Mount Parnassus. The second play drops the allegory and describes the two graduates' unsuccessful attempts to make a living, as does the third play, which is the only one that was contemporaneously published. New in the third play is the serious treatment of issues regarding censorship. 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", and that they are "among the most inexplicably neglected key documents of Shakespeare's age".

The first play, The Pilgrimage to Parnassus, describes allegorically the progress of the two students through the university courses of logic, rhetoric, etc., and the temptations that are 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 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. A further sequel, The Return from Parnassus, Or the Scourge of Simony, is more ambitious than the two earlier plays. Knowledge of what occurs in the first two plays is not essential to understand the third play, but it is helpful to illuminate a few of the allusions that occur. 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. 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.

It is not known who wrote them or if they were all the work of one person. John Day was suggested as a possible author by Bolton Corney in 1868, based on a copy of the 1606 quarto, on which was hand written, "To my Lovinge Smallocke J: D:", and also based on Corney's comparison of the handwriting, and on personal connections that Day had as a Cambridge man. But the suggestion has had little support. Some clues to the author's identity are offered in the prologue to the second play, The Return from Parnassus, but they are not enough to make an identification. Whoever the author was, the plays indicate that he was intelligent, observant and well read. The author appears to have included a self portrait in the guise of the character "Judicio", who appears in third play and comments on a number of contemporary poets.

The three pieces were evidently performed at Christmas of different years, not later than Christmas 1602, because of the references to Queen Elizabeth I, who died in March 1603. The first play, Pilgrimage to Parnassus can not have been written earlier than 1598, because it mentions books that were not printed until that year. The prologue of the third play, The Return from Parnassus: Or the Scourge of Simony, states that that play had been written for the preceding year, so the year 1601 seems credible for the writing of the last play of the trilogy.

The question of whether or not the characters are meant to represent actual persons, and if so to what extent, has been much discussed. Much of the speculation centering around the London literary scene. However, sustained reference to the London scene, is not a part of the first play, but enters into the trilogy only for the second and third parts. 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. Ingenioso does speak in praise of Nashe, who died in 1601. The author of the plays was evidently very familiar with Nashe's works, and all three parts are full of reminiscences of Nashe's writings. In the third play Ingenioso announces that he is in trouble for the plays he has written, and he exits saying, "now I am bound for the Ile of doggs Fare well." A notorious dramatic satire titled The Isle of Dogs, written by Nashe and Ben Jonson, and performed in 1597, was considered so slanderous that the Privy Council gave in to pressure from the City government and demanded theatrical performances be stopped and that London's playhouses be torn down. It is thought that the two students, Studioso and Philomusus are in part portrayals of Shakespeare and Thomas Kyd. 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. It is thought that "Furor Poeticus" represents John Marston, and "Luxurio" represents Gabriel Harvey. 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. Southampton would not have attended the performance in 1601, he was at the time under sentence of death for his part in the Essex conspiracy. The printer Danter, who appears in the third play, is based on actual person, a printer named John Danter, who is noted for printing the piratical first quarto of Romeo and Juliet, as well as other plays and texts. The college recorder, Francis Brackyn was an actual person, who is harshly satirized in The Return from Parnassus: Or the Scourge of Simony as the character "Recorder". Brackyn had been ridiculed in another university play, Club Rules, and would be yet again as the title character in George Ruggle's 1615 academic play Ignoramus.

The third play, The Return from Parnassus; the Scourge of Simony, was published twice in 1606 — four years after its original performance— with many textual variations between the two editions. It was reprinted in the 18th century, and again in 1879. The third play was the only part that was published, and for many years the first two plays were considered lost. Then in 1886 W. D. Macray, the librarian of the Bodleian Library at Oxford, discovered the lost plays, while he was doing research among the manuscripts collected by Thomas Hearne, which are part of the Richard Rawlinson collection at the Bodleian Library. Macray immediately edited and published all three plays together. 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. A handwritten manuscript of the third play, The Return from Parnassus, or the Scourge of Simony, also exists. It was found in an old family library, according to Macray. The handwriting indicates that it is contemporary with the play's first performances. It is a small quarto volume, bound in parchment. The manuscript is housed in the Folger Shakespeare Library. 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.

A rehearsed reading of the Return from Parnassus, or The Scourge of Simony was performed 6 December 2009 as part of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre's Read Not Dead series. The cast included David Oakes as Ingenious and Kevin Quarmby as Burbage.