Classical Receptions in Early Modern English Drama

The project explores the reception of classical literature in 16th- and early 17th-century English theatre. It offers the first comprehensive study of the dissemination of classical Greek and Latin texts and of their vernacular mediations with special reference to their circulation in early modern England, and, in particular, within the Elizabethan and Jacobean Court. It also explores some aspects of the development of the English language under the impact of Latin. The project has produced critical studies on this topic, and includes the setting up of two digital relational open-access databases (GEMS Greek and Latin Drama on the Early Modern English Stage; and EMEC – Early Modern English Choruses) devoted to a textual and intertextual exploration of classical drama and its appropriated forms in English plays. It also provides an archive of English and Latin grammars published in England in the same period (EMEGA – Early Modern English Grammars Archive). The three archives supply innovative research tools alternative to traditional repositories. They offer critical editions and electronic resources for a textual comparison of a corpus currently not entirely and freely available either online or in print form.

Unit 1: PI Silvia Bigliazzi, Gherardo Ugolini, Emanuel Stelzer, Tommaso Continisio, Francesco Dall’Olio, Marco Duranti, Vlado Jelcic, Carla Suthren, Angelica Vedelago, Roberta Zanoni
Unit 2: PI Bajetta Carlo Maria, Francesco Dall’Olio, Roberta Grandi 
Unit 3: PI Domenico Lovascio, Marco Bagli, Cristiano Broccias, Michela Compagnoni, Cristiano Ragni, Ilaria Rizzato
Unit 4: PI Alessandro Grilli, Francesco Morosi

Link to the CLARE archive

Link to the CLARE webpage on the website of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures of the University of Verona

Publications

Monographs:

  • Bigliazzi, Silvia. 2026 (forthcoming). The Chorus in Early Modern English Tragedy. The One and the Many. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Stelzer, Emanuel. 2026 (forthcoming). Staging Olympus in Early Modern English Drama. (Skenè Studies II). Pisa: ETS.
  • Duranti, Marco. 2025 (forthcoming). Constancy and the Art of Dying. Ancient Philosophy and Early Modern Tragedy (Skenè Studies II). Pisa: ETS.
  • Dall’Olio, Francesco. 2024. King Tyrannos. Pensiero Greco e tirannide nell’Inghilterra rinascimentale (Skenè. Testi e studi). Pisa: ETS.
  • Grilli, Alessandro, and Francesco Morosi. 2023. Action, Song, and Poetry. Musical and Poetical Meta-performance in Aristophanes and Ben Jonson (Skenè Studies II, 5). Pisa: ETS.
  • Lovascio, Domenico. 2022. John Fletcher’s Rome: Questioning the Classics. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
  • Grilli, Alessandro. 2021. Aristofane e i volti dell’eroe. Per una grammatica dell’eroismo comico (Studi e testi di cultura classica, 83). Pisa: ETS.

Critical/Scholarly Editions:

  • Bigliazzi, Silvia, and Carla Suthren, eds. 2026 (forthcoming). George Gascoigne and Francis Kinwelmersh’s Jocasta. Cambridge: MHRA.
  • Dall’Olio, Francesco, and Francesco Morosi, eds. 2025 (forthcoming). Three Early Modern English Interludes: Thersites, Damon and Pithias, and Horestes (Skenè. Texts and Studies). Pisa: ETS.
  • Dall’Olio, Francesco, ed. 2025 (forthcoming). Thomas Preston’s Cambyses (Skenè. Texts and Studies). Pisa: ETS.
  • Duranti, Marco. 2022. “Ecclesiae et Rei Publicae”: Greek Drama and the Education of the Ruling Class in Elizabethan England. Verona: Skenè Texts and Studies.
  • Lovascio, Domenico, ed. 2022. The False One, by John Fletcher and Philip Massinger. Manchester: Manchester Univeristy Press.

Edited Volumes:

  • Ugolini, Gherardo, ed. (forthcoming). Antigone in the 16th Century. Thomas Watson and Other Adaptations of the Sophoclean drama (Skenè Texts and Studies). Pisa: ETS. 
  • Suthren, Carla ed. (forthcoming), George Buchanan and Tragedy. Between Stage and State. (Skenè Texts and Studies). Pisa: ETS. 
  • Grilli, Alessandro, and Emanuel Stelzer, eds. 2025 (forthcoming.) “The bees that sat upon the Grecian’s lips”: Classical Receptions in Early Modern English Drama (Skenè. Texts and Studies). Pisa: ETS.
  • Bigliazzi, Silvia, and Tania Demetriou, eds. 2024. What Is a Greek Source on the Early English Stage? Fifteen New Essays (Skenè. Texts DA. ClaRE 1). Pisa: ETS.

Special Issues of Academic Journals:

  • Bigliazzi, Silvia, ed. 2021. Skenè. Journal of Theatre and Drama Studies 7 (2). Title: Well-Staged Syllables. From Classical to Early Modern English Metres in Drama

Articles:

  • Bigliazzi, Silvia. 2024. “‘A Tragedie Written in Greeke’: How Jocasta was Made ‘Classical’”. Early Theatre27 (2): 95-114.
    — 2021. “Versifying the Senecan Chorus: Notes on Jasper Heywood’s Emulative Approach to Troas”. Skenè. JTDS 7 (2). Special Issue “Well-Staged Syllables. From Classical to Early Modern English Metres in Drama”: 139-65.
    — 2020. “Leader and Pack: On Two Scenes Concealed from View in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar”. Memoria di Shakespeare 7: 164-88.
  • Dall’Olio, Francesco. 2024. “Orestes at Elizabeth’s Court: a Possible Court Representation of John Pikeryng’s Horestes”. Skenè. JTDS 10 (2): 45-74.
    —  2022. “Athens, the Moon and You: Diana and the Female Appropriation of Marriage in A Midsummer Night’s Dream”. Skenè. JTDS 8 (1): 167-88.
    — 2021. “Two Worlds, One Language: Metrics for the Chorus in Buchanan’s Euripidean Translations”. Skenè. JTDS 7 (2). Special Issue “Well-Staged Syllables. From Classical to Early Modern English Metres in Drama”: 117-37.
    — 2020. “‘In King Cambyses’ Vein’: Reconsidering the Relationship between Thomas Preston’s Cambises and Herodotus”.Erga-Logoi: 8 (2): 109-31.
  • Duranti, Marco. 2021a. “‘An unexplored sea’. The Metres of Greek Drama in Early Modern England”. Skenè. JTDS 7 (2). Special Issue “Well-Staged Syllables. From Classical to Early Modern English Metres in Drama”: 65-79.
    — 2021b. “The First Greek Tragedy Printed in England: Some Textual and Typographical Notes”. Skenè. JTDS 7 (1): 111-22.
  • Grilli, Alessandro. 2025. “Digesting Aristophanes: The Assimilation of Attic Old Comedy in Jonson’s The Alchemist”. Skenè. JTDS 11 (2).
  • Ragni, Cristiano. 2023. “‘. . . nostram solam ex tot linguis perfectam. . .’ Paul Greaves’ Grammatica Anglicana (1594) between Latin Influences and Patriotism”. Status Quaestionis 24: 255-72.
  • Stelzer, Emanuel. 2021. “Confluences and Spillages: Enjambment in Elizabethan Tragedy and the Classics”. Skenè. JTDS 7 (2). Special Issue “Well-Staged Syllables. From Classical to Early Modern English Metres in Drama”: 167-202.
  • Vedelago, Angelica. 2021. “‘Ex uariis metri generibus’: Two ‘Metrical’ Neo-Latin Translators of Greek Tragedy across the English Channel”. Skenè. JTDS 7 (2). Special Issue “Well-Staged Syllables. From Classical to Early Modern English Metres in Drama”: 81-116.

Essays in Volumes:

  • Bajetta, Carlo M. 2025 (forthcoming). ““More lines than is in the new map”: Modern and Ptolemaic Cosmography in Twelfth Night”. In Grilli and Stelzer 2025.
  • Bigliazzi, Silvia. 2024a. “Introduction”. What is a Greek Source on the Early English Stage? Fifteen New Essays, edited by Silvia Bigliazzi and Tania Demetriou (Skenè. Texts DA. ClaRE 1), 17-43. Pisa: ETS.
  • — 2024b. “The Strange Case of the Singing Chorus that Was Not There. On the Authority of Authorities”. In Bigliazzi and Demetriou 2024, 71-10.
  • — 2022. “Tra attore e autore: coro e focalizzazione nel dramma inglese del Rinascimento”. In Metodologie, teorie e saperi a confronto, edited by Daniela Tononi, 11-45. Napoli: Unior. 
  • Dall’Olio, Francesco. 2024. ““An Empire equall with thy mind”: the ‘Persian Plays’ and the Reception of Herodotus in Renaissance England”. In Bigliazzi and Demetriou 2024, 197-222.
  • Grilli, Alessandro, and Emanuel Stelzer. 2025 (forthcoming). “Introduction”. In Grilli and Stelzer 2025. 
  • Grilli, Alessandro. 2024. “An Idea of Old Comedy: Ben Jonson’s Metatextual Appropriation of Aristophanes”. In Bigliazzi and Demetriou 2024, 126-68.
  • Lovascio, Domenico. 2024. “Unveiling Wives: Euripides’ Alcestis and Two Plays in the Fletcher Canon”. In Bigliazzi and Demetriou 2024, 335-58.
  • Morosi, Francesco. 2025 (forthcoming). “The Importance of Being Simple. New Readings of Clouds in Early Modern England”. In Grilli and Stelzer 2025.
  • Stelzer, Emanuel. 2024. “Questions of Mediation of the Deus ex Machina in Elizabethan Drama”. In Bigliazzi and Demetriou 2024, 263-92.
  • Vedelago, Angelica. 2023. “Imitation, Collaboration, Competition Between English and Continental Translators of Greek Tragedy”. In Translating Ancient Greek Drama in Early Modern Europe, edited by Malika Bastin-Hammou, Giovanna Di Martino, Cécile Dudouyt, and Lucy C.M.M. Jackson, 91-114. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter.

Organisation of international conferences:

– 2024 S. Bigliazzi and Tania Demetriou: 3° convegno internazionale PRIN (convegno finale), ClaRE: Classical Receptions in Early Modern English Drama: International Conference: 2017 PRIN Project, Verona 20-21 agosto.

– 2023 S. Bigliazzi: Herodotean Encounters, International Colloquium, 2017 PRIN Project, 20 Settembre (Zoom).

– 2023 S. Bigliazzi and Tania Demetriou: 2° convegno internazionale PRIN, Classical Receptions in Early Modern English Drama, 2017 PRIN Project, 10-11 gennaio (Zoom). – 2022 S. Bigliazzi and Tania Demetriou: 1° convegno internazionale PRIN, Classical Receptions in Early Modern English Drama, 2017 PRIN, 10-12 gennaio (Zoom).

Organisation of seminars and panels in international conferences:

– 2021 S. Bigliazzi: “Transformative Circuits from Graeco-Roman Historiography and Poetry to Shakespeare”: Panel, World Shakespeare Congress, Singapore (Zoom), 22-25 luglio.

– 2020 S. Bigliazzi: “‘Well-Staged Syllables’. Metrica e teatro fra antichità classica e Rinascimento inglese”, Verona (zoom), 29 ottobre 2020.
     · Angelica Vedelago: “Ex Variis metri generibus: la prosodia classica nel Rinascimento inglese ed esempi di versificazione nel teatro neolatino
     · Emanuel Stelzer: “Il blank verse drammatico nel contesto di una ‘rhyming age’”

Participation in international conferences:

– 2023 D. Lovascio, ‘Conversing about Books – John Fletcher’s Rome: Questioning the Classics’, Seminario Permanente di Studi shakespeariani, Sapienza Univ. Roma, 16 gennaio.

– 2023 M. Bagli, “Interjections in Early Modern Grammars: Rupture and Continuity”, IASEMS Conference, Univ. Napoli L’Orientale, 9 giugno.

– 2023 C.M. Bajetta, “Too saucy in his advising of princes: Sir Walter Ralegh’s ‘advices’ to King James I”, Future Horizons: New Beginnings in English Studies – XXXI AIA Conference Rende, Cosenza, 13-16 settembre.

– 2021 S. Bigliazzi, “Influenze e confluenze testuali: un Euripide inglese”, Seminari del Centro di Ricerca “Argo”, Univ. Napoli ‘L’Orientale’, 23 aprile.

– 2021 C.M. Bajetta, “Per una filologia della cultura”, Seminari del Centro di Ricerca “Argo”, Univ. Napoli “L’Orientale”.

– 2021 D. Lovascio, ‘Fletcher and Massinger’s The False One: Dating, First Performance and Classical Sources’, ShBEMSS: Sheffield Hallam/Bangor Early Modern Seminar Series (via Zoom), 14, dicembre.

– 2020 C.M. Bajetta, “Undoing the Empire right from the start: Sir Walter Ralegh and the Elizabethan Renaissance’ Undoing the Renaissance, Univ. Calabria (online).

– 2019 C.M. Bajetta, “Oh, well, that’s a classic…: when books disappear” XXIX Aia Conference; “Thinking Out of the Box”, Univ. Padova, 5-7 Settembre.

Papers at international conferences:

– 2024 C.M.Bajetta, “Mum’s cakes, paper, and parchment”, RSA, Chicago, 21.03 – 2024 F. Morosi, ‘Translating Ideology? The Case of Aristophanes in Early Modern Translations’. Aristophanes after Babel . . ., Grenoble, 30-31.05

– 2024 F. Morosi, ‘Performance translation’. Translating Latin and Greek. An Introduction for Classicists and Others. Scuola Normale Superiore. Pisa, 3-5.06. – 2024 ClaRE: Classical Receptions in Early Modern English Drama: 3rd Int. Conference: 2017 PRIN, 20-21.08:
     · S. Bigliazzi: “The One and the Many. Gendering Chorality in Shakespeare”
     · F. Morosi, “The Importance of Being Simple. Aristophanic Transformations in Thomas Randolph’s Drinking Academy”
     · F. Dall’Olio, “The Seat of Mighty Conquerors: Marlowe’s Tamburlaine and the Influence of the Ancient Persian Empire Model”
     · M. Duranti, “Less Greek? A Reappraisal of Greek Scholarship in Early Modern England” · C.M. Bajetta, ““More lines than is in the new map”: Modern and Ptolemaic Cosmography in Twelfth Night”
     · D. Lovascio, “The Failure of the Classics in John Fletcher’s The Mad Lover”
     · S. Bigliazzi, A. Grilli, D. Lovascio, C. Bajetta. “Roundtable: Presentation of “ClaRe”

– 2024 C.M.Bajetta, “Why (re-)edit Sir Walter Ralegh’s letters at all?” ESSE 2024, Univ. di Losanna, 28.08

– 2024 C.M. Bajetta, “Invaded or impeached we cannot be, but by sea’: Sir Walter Ralegh’s ‘War with Spain’ and King James I”, Counsellors and Counselled, Univ. Padova, 12.09

– 2023 Classical Receptions in Early Modern English Drama, 2nd 2017 PRIN Int. Colloquium, Univ. Verona, 10-12.01:
     · S. Bigliazzi and C. Suthren, “Taking Seneca for Granted in Early Modern Drama”
      · A. Grilli, “The Flaunting of Influence: Glamorous Models and the Liberty of Creation”
     · D. Lovascio, “Fletcher’s Classical (Re)sources”
     · F. Morosi, “Uncontrolled Anachronisms. Form and Ideology in the Reception of Ancient Comic Texts”

– 2023 Herodotean Encounters, Int. Colloquium, 2017 PRIN, 20.09 (Zoom):
     · C. M. Bajetta and F. Dall’Olio, “Sir Walter Ralegh’s Herodotus: an Ancient Historian in The History of the World”
     · M. Duranti, “Herodotus in Early Modern Travel Literature”

– 2023 S. Bigliazzi: “‘Where is Antony?’ North, Plutarch, and Competing Narratives of the Ides of March”, Translating Plutarch, Int. Plutarch Society, Coventry Univ., 28-30.06 – 2023 F. Dall’Olio: “. . . Theatre and Politics at Elizabeth’s Court”. Memory and Performance, UCL, 23-4.02 – 2022 Classical Receptions in Early Modern English Drama, 1st 2017 PRIN Int. Colloquium, 10-12.01 (Zoom):
     · G. Ugolini, “Unwritten Law and Natural Law in Thomas Watson’s Antigone” · S. Bigliazzi, “On Early Modern English Tragic Choruses: Stage and Page Performances” · M. Duranti: “Performances Without Texts: A Paradox about Greek Drama in Early Modern England”
     · E. Stelzer: “‘[S]ome God out of a ginne in a tragedie’: Questions of Mediation of the Deus ex Machina in Elizabethan Drama”
     · C. Ragni, “‘…nostram solam ex tot linguis perfectam…’ Paul Greaves’s Grammatica Anglicana (1594) . . .”
     · C.M. Bajetta and R. Grandi, “What are you reading my Lord?’ Libraries and Uncertainty in Elizabethan England”
     · F. Dall’Olio, “Three Authors and a History of the World: Herodotus, Thucydides and Xenophon in Sir Walter Ralegh’s Library”
     · D. Lovascio, “Unveiling Wives: Euripides’ Alcestis and Two Plays in the Fletcher Canon”
     · A. Grilli, “Intertextual appropriation in The Alchemist: Jonson, Aristophanes, and the Others”
     · F. Morosi, “Translator, Adapter, and Interpreter: Thomas Randolph and Penia in Aristophanes’ Wealth”.

– 2022 D. Lovascio, ‘John Fletcher and Philip Massinger’s The False One: A Blackfriars Play?’, XII IASEMS, Univ. Bologna, 9.06

– 2022 F. Morosi, “Poor as a Scholar: Thomas Randolph and Penia in Aristophanes’ Wealth”, Translating Ancient Greek Drama in the Early Modern Period (1600-1800), UCL, 24.06

– 2022 E. Stelzer, “Mythographic Fantasy and Festive Pastiche in William Percy’s Aphrodysial”, Memory and Performance, Univ. Parma 14.10

– 2021 S. Bigliazzi: “The Life of Antony: Perspectival Mobility in Ancient Biographies and their Legacy in Renaissance Plays”, Virtual RSA 2021, 13-15, 20-21-04

– 2021 S. Bigliazzi: “The Early Modern Chorus: from Stage to Page and Back”, Theater Without Borders Annual Conference, Theater Technologies Crossing Borders, Past to Present, NYU Florence (Zoom), 21-23.06

– 2021 S. Bigliazzi: “Social Confusion in Shakespeare’s Republican Rome: the People’s Case in Graeco-Roman and Vernacular Translative Circuits” Singapore, WSC online, 22-25.07

– 2021 S. Bigliazzi, “From Actor to Author: The Early Modern Chorus as Focalizer”, The Israel Colloquium on Narratology, Ben-Gurion Univ., 13.12

– 2019 S. Bigliazzi: “‘. . . the people like a Quire did sing lamentation unto him’: Theatrics of Power in Early Modern Caesar Plays”, Theater Without Borders annual Conference, Wesleyan Univ., 24-27.06

– 2019 S. Bigliazzi: “Fluid Borders: Rethinking Power Centres in Shakespeare’s Rome”, keynote lecture, ESRA, Roma 9-12.07

Participation in international seminars:

– 2023 F. Morosi, ‘Performance Translation’. International Workshop “Translation: An Introduction for Classicists and Others”, Giessen, 25-27 May 2023.

– 2022 S. Bigliazzi: “Classical Drama and Early Modern Theatre: The Case of Jocasta”, Visiting Fellows Colloquium, All Souls College, Oxford, 3 maggio 2022.

– 2021 S. Bigliazzi, “Influenze e confluenze testuali: un Euripide inglese”, Seminari “Argo”, Univ. ‘L’Orientale’, 23 aprile 2021

– 2020 S. Bigliazzi,“Il che faceua bellissimo vedere”: Two Renaissance Jocasta, from Playbook to Spectacle”, Graduate Renaissance Seminars, 26 maggio 2020, Sidney Sussex, Cambridge.

– 2020 D. Lovascio, “Diocletian in the Marketplace and the Countryside in Fletcher and Massinger’s The Prophetess: Shades of Antony”, Virtual Spiritual and Material Renaissances Colloquium, Sheffield Hallam University (via Zoom), 16 giugno.

– 2019 S. Bigliazzi: ‘“The autor the Chorus must defende”: Translating the Chorus of Seneca’s Troades”, Classical Tragedy Translated in Early Modern England, A Cambridge Society for Neo-Latin Studies Workshop, Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, 18 Maggio 2019.

– 2019 A. Grilli, ‘Classical Receptions in Early Modern English Drama’, relazione alla giornata di studi: On Translating Greek Drama in Early Modern Europe, 29 novembre 2019, Maison Française, Oxford. Tavole rotonde e presentazione pubblicazioni:

– 2025 S. Bigliazzi: roundtable “Greek Contaminations in Early Modern English Drama”, RSA Boston, 20-22 marzo.

– 2025 S. Bigliazzi, E. Stelzer, G. Ugolini, D. Lovascio, Carlo Bajetta, A. Grilli, F. Morosi: presentazione delle pubblicazioni relative al progetto (Università di Verona e Zoom; 2 luglio): https://skene.dlls.univr.it/en/2025/06/23/classical-receptions-in-early-modern-english-drama-prin-2017/

– 2025 D. Lovascio, ‘John Fletcher (1579–1625) e i classici: contaminazione e irriverenza’, conferenza presso l’Accademia Ligure di Scienze e Lettere, Genova (16.01).

– 2025 Marco Bagli, “Interjections in Early Modern Grammars: Balancing tradition, innovation, and pedagogy”, ICHOLLT (International Conference on the History of Language Learning and Teaching), University of Insubria, Como (05.06).

– 2023 D. Lovascio, ‘John Fletcher’s Rome: Questioning the Classics’, for the PhD programme in Storia, Arti e Linguaggi nell’Europa Antica e Moderna, Università di Perugia, 24 maggio.

Partecipazione convegni nel 2025:

2025 S. Bigliazzi: “Il che faceua bellissimo vedere”: Voco-Visual Transitions from Playbook to Spectacle in Two Renaissance Jocasta, partecipazione al panel “Renaissance Literature in Intermedial Studies I: Text ? Image”, RSA Boston, 20-22 marzo

2025 E. Stelzer, “Early Modern English Dramatists and Mythopoetic Liberty”, partecipazione alla roundtable “Greek Contaminations in Early Modern English Drama”, RSA Boston, 20-22 marzo.

2025 C. Ragni, “‘Dear daughter’, ‘mad sister’, ‘fairest maid’: Early Modern English Cassandras”, partecipazione alla roundtable “Greek Contaminations in Early Modern English Drama”, RSA Boston, 20-22 marzo