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

Greek
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.

English
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
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