Page of Plymouth

Page of Plymouth is a lost play by Ben Jonson, which was performed at The Rose Playhouse London in 1599 and was based on a notorious murder widely written about in ballads and pamphlets at the time. With a grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, Literature Works have organised a city-wide project celebrating the oldest piece of known literature set in Plymouth.

There are so many aspects of the story which resonate today: misogyny, coercion, a public fascination with true crime, the vilification of women in the media, to name but a few, and this project has explored stories of those living in and around the city today alongside archival records, the history of Elizabethan theatre, the power of costume to construct identity and the impact of printing on the shaping of stories.

Members of Women Speak Volumes South West were invited to attend workshops at The Box with the project’s writer-in-residence, the brilliant (and very lovely!) poet Fiona Benson. Some of the work developed from those sessions, including mine, was read in the Project Finale at the Barbican Theatre, Plymouth and included in a pamphlet of work printed by Kiss & Bite Press.

https://literatureworks.org.uk/projects/page-of-plymouth/