Stonehenge

John Speed (1635)

Historical Records

Anthony a Wood:

Stonehenge, a pastoral - Acted before Dr. Rich Baylie the president and fellows of the said coll. in their common refectory, at what time the said doctor was returned from Salisbury, after he had been installed dean thereof an. 1635. The said Pastoral is not printed, but goes about in MS. from hand to hand.

(Wood, Athenae Oxonienses 2.660, cited from Bentley 5.1182).

Theatrical Provenance

St. John's College, Oxford

Probable Genre(s)

Pastoral

Possible Narrative and Dramatic Sources or Analogues

Possibly extant as The Converted Robber.

References to the Play

None known

Critical Commentary

The Converted Robber, a play surviving in a manuscript with St. John's College associations, is a pastoral comedy set around Stonehenge, which is sometimes ascribed to George Wild, author of other plays in the same collection. W. W. Greg proposed, and his proposal has generally been accepted, that this play is in fact Speed's Stonehenge (Greg, Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama, 382-3; Bentley, 5.1182-4).

To add further complications, there is another record of a lost play associated with the area: Salisbury Plain a comedy, recorded on Marriott's List (1653). Bentley suggests that "it is possible" that this, too, is Stonehenge/The Converted Robber (5.1405), a possibility pursued in more detail on this page: Salisbury Plain.

Works Cited

Greg, W. W. Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama. London: Bullen, 1906. http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/12218

Site created and maintained by Matthew Steggle, Sheffield Hallam University; updated 16 April 2010.