PARNASSUS PLAYS, a series of three scholastic entertain ments performed at St. John's College, Cambridge, between 1597 and 1603. They are satirical in character and aim at setting forth the wretched state of scholars and the small respect paid to learning by the world at large, as exemplified in the adventures of two university men, Philomusus and Studioso. The first part, The Pilgrimage to Parnassus, describes allegorically their four years' journey to Parnassus, i.e., their progress through the uni versity course. The sequel The Return from Parnassus, which deals with the adventures of the two students after the completion of their studies at the university, shows them discovering by bitter experience of how little pecuniary value their learning is.
A further sequel, The Second Part of the Return from Par nassus, or the Scourge of Simony, is a more ambitious, and from every point of view more interesting, production than the two earlier pieces. In it on pretence of discussing a recently published collection of extracts from contemporary poetry, John Bodenham's Belvedere, one of the characters sums up a number of writers of the day, among them being Spenser, Constable, Drayton, John Davies, Marlowe, Jonson, Shakespeare and Nashe.
Their author is unknown, but the plays have generally been regarded as the work of a single writer—possibly John Day or one William Dodd (see full discussion in Ward's Eng. Dram. Lit. ii.
64o, note 2). The three pieces were evidently performed at Christ mas of different years, and allusions to contemporary matters show that the first cannot have been earlier than 1598 nor the last later than 1602.