Reconstructing lost plays

Humanities > School of Language and Literature > Department for Literary Studies > Writing Centre

Plays have been lost since antiquity. The purpose of the project is to reconstruct them in the English language from available evidence.

## Antiquity

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A Lost Plays Database exits in regard to Greek and Roman plays of antiquity at http://lostgreekplays.com/.

### Greek

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Most Greek plays of antiquity written by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides , and Aristophanes have been lost, but the stories may be obtained at least in part through books of Greek mythology, notably The Greek Myths (1955), a compendium assembled by Robert Graves.

### Roman

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## Medieval

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### English

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### Foreign

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## Renaissance

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### English

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A database of lost English plays exists at http://www.lostplays.org/index.php/Main_Page. One example of a lost play is The History of Cardenio by John Fletcher (playwright) and William Shakespeare, reconstructed by Gary Taylor (scholar)

Another example of a lost English Renaissance play that may be reconstructed is Keep the Widow Waking by John Webster and others.

#### Keep the Widow Waking

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A description of the lost play is given at this Internet site:

http://www.lostplays.org/index.php/Late_Murder_in_White_Chapel,_or_Keep_the_Widow_Waking#.E2.80.9CTragic.E2.80.9D_plot:_The_murder_of_Joan_Tindall_by_her_son.2C_Nathaniel_Tindall

From that text, we attempt to reconstruct the entire play.

See

Keep the Widow Waking

### Foreign

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## Baroque

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### English

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### Foreign

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## 18th century

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### English

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### Foreign

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## 19th century

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### English

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### Foreign

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## 20th century

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### English

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### Foreign

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## 21st century

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### English

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### Foreign

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| Wikibooks has a book on the topic of History_of_Western_Theatre:_Greeks_to_Elizabethans.

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| Wikibooks has a book on the topic of History_of_Western_Theatre:_17th_Century_to_Now.

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