Cambridge students put on a Christmas satire

It’s Christmas, around 1601, and students at St John’s College in Cambridge are doing what many still do today. They were having fun. And they were doing so in a way which was not a million miles from the playful antics of today's University's famous drama group the Cambridge Footlights.

St John’s students were putting on their own play - a satire produced as part of the college’s Christmas festivities. It was written and staged by the students themselves – and while it shows great respect to Shakespeare, the overall tone is gently playful.

The drama, The Return from Parnassus (Part II), survives today in manuscript form, but was also printed in 1605 and 1606. It was one of three plays on the subject of Parnassus, the students’ literary name for Cambridge.

In this Christmas entertainment piece we see these students from Elizabeth I’s time worrying about unemployment, as they still do today of course. They also worried about the risks of seeking employment outside the church. Some graduates found work in the theatre, though they were concerned as to the status of such work in the eyes of decent society.

Towards the end of the drama (Act IV Scene III) occurs an exchange between Richard “Dick” Burbage and “Will” Kempe (also commonly referred to as Will Kemp), two of the top actors in William Shakespeare’s company, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men.

In the play, two students from Cambridge named Philomusus and Studioso, have travelled to London to audition as actors. Burbage thinks the students are good prospects because they will work for little money:

Burbidg/ Now Will Kempe, if wee can entertaine these schollars at a low rate it will bee well, they oftentimes have a good conceite in a parte…

Kemp, however, worries about bad habits the young men may have picked up at Cambridge:

Kempe/ Its true indeed honest Dick; but the slaves are somewhat proud, & besides ‘tis good spoorte in a part to see them never speak in their walk, but at the end of the stage, just as though in walking with a fellow we should never speak but at a stile, a gate or a ditch, where a man can goe no farther;

The reference here is to the fact that Cambridge students typically spoke their lines from the front edge of the stage, while London actors spoke from wherever they happened to be at the time. You can almost hear the laughter now from the students of the time, intent on enjoying their Christmas at St John’s. Kemp continues:

I was once at a Comedy in Cambridge & there I saw a parasite make faces & mouths of all sorts on this fashion/

Presumably the actor playing Kemp makes a grotesque face. London actors behaved more naturally.

Burbage defends the students:

Burb: A little teaching will mend those faults, & it may be besides they will be able to pen a part.

In another section of the student Christmas drama there is a clue to the great rivalry between the big playwrights of the day – William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson.

Ben Jonson (1573–1637) by Charles Fullwood (Painted 1904). Credit: Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.

The play also illustrates the tension between those who think playwrights need to have a university education and those who do not.

We see lead Shakespearean actor ‘Dick’ Burbage arguing in the play that students are smart enough to learn and can double as playwrights. Will Kempe objects:

Kempe/ Few of the University men pen plays well, they smell too much of that writer Ovid, & that writer Metamorphoses, & talke too much of Proserpina & Jupiter: why here’s our fellow Shakspeare putts them all downe, aye, and Ben Jonson too! O that Ben Jonson is a pestilent fellow, he brought up Horace giving the poets a pill; but our fellow Shakespeare hath given him a purge that made him beraye his credit.

Burbage Its a shrewd fellow indeed. I wonder these schollars stay so long, they appointed to be here presently that we might try them. Oh, here they come …

So Kemp expresses the fear that men brought up in the university will never make good playwrights: “our fellow Shakspeare puts them all downe,” along with Ben Jonson, who likewise had not attended either university. Kemp alludes to that rivalry between Jonson and Shakespeare in which the latter came out the best - reflecting Shakespeare’s easy and comfortable ascendancy in a perceived competition between the two principal playwrights of the late 1590s.