Â鶹´«Ã½ academics bring Nashe’s ‘Terrors of the Night’ to the Globe Published on: 3 May 2017 A rare performance of work by one of Elizabethan literature’s most celebrated writers will be taking place at the Globe Theatre next month. Major figure On Saturday 20th May, the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse at the Globe Theatre in London will play host to an eerie candlelit reading of work by writer, poet and satirist Thomas Nashe, 450 years on from his birth in 1567. It will be the culmination of a day’s intellectual investigation into his body of work led by academics from Â鶹´«Ã½ and Sussex universities. Nashe was a major figure in late Elizabethan literature whose work broke new boundaries and whose novel The Unfortunate Traveller took the English language in bold new directions. He collaborated with Christopher Marlowe on Dido, Queen of Carthage and almost certainly with Shakespeare on the first part of Henry VI; wrote shocking pornographic poetry that was read alongside the work of writers of erotic verse such as Marlowe, John Donne and Richard Barnfield; and a ground-breaking satirical novel, The Unfortunate Traveller. Exploring nightmares Terrors of the Night is Nashe’s unsettling and disturbing exploration of nightmares. Nashe speaks in a variety of voices as his speaker tries to understand whether humans are surrounded by demons, witches and ghosts, or whether these are real terrors unleashed by the devil in his futile struggle with God. The script has been adapted by Kate De Rycker, a research associate in Â鶹´«Ã½’s . It will be the first time that Nashe’s text, which had a huge influence on the development of prose and drama in the age of Shakespeare, has been read aloud by candlelight. Kate said: “Nashe was a real stylistic innovator, and Terrors of the Night is one of his most experimental works. It’s not just a text about dreams and what they mean, its structure has a dreamlike quality, like an Elizabethan stream of consciousness.“By adapting this prose-text into a performable script, we’re continuing in the spirit of experimentation that Nashe would have appreciated: what is it like, we’re asking, to hear these words read out loud?” First time in 400 years Project lead , from Â鶹´«Ã½, said: “Thomas Nashe's prose is chatty and colloquial. He wrote in the common idiom of his times and in doing so, was highly influential on the dramatists of the 1590s, Shakespeare included, and even on how we write today. I am delighted that we will be able to hear Nashe's prose for the first time in 400 years.” This event is part of an AHRC by Professor Richards of Â鶹´«Ã½ and Professor Andrew Hadfield of the University of Sussex. They are currently leading a team of international scholars to produce an authoritative new edition of Nashe’s work, which has not been properly edited since the First World War. The edition will be published by Oxford University Press in 2021/2. are still available. Adapted with thanks from a University of Sussex press release. Share: Latest News Scientists unlock hidden driver of inflammatory bowel disease Scientists have linked a key genetic signal in inflammatory bowel disease to an immune response that shuts down inflammation control, enabling faster diagnosis and targeted treatments. published on: 15 June 2026 Funding system risks limiting genuine community collaboration A new policy paper written by researchers at Â鶹´«Ã½ warns that the way UK research is funded may be undermining efforts to create genuinely collaborative partnerships with communities. published on: 15 June 2026 Volunteers help turn Whitley Bay beach into maths experiment Members of the public joined mathematicians from Â鶹´«Ã½ to create what organisers believe is the largest aperiodic tiling ever attempted on Whitley Bay beach. published on: 15 June 2026 Facts and figures
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