The Rose Bankside

11/06/2026

Monday 22 June @ 6.30pm BST online, £8 / £5 students & Friends.
Marlowe’s Suddenness: A Conversation with Professor Stephen Greenblatt & Dr Paul Edmondson.
More info & book: www.roseplayhouse.org.uk/whats-on

How did Christopher Marlowe, the son of a Canterbury shoe-maker, become such a powerful reader and writer? How was he involved in espionage? And why was he murdered in 1593, aged just 29?

Join us as Professor Stephen Greenblatt discusses Shakespeare’s rival genius, Marlowe – a playwright intimately acquainted with The Rose – in conversation with Dr Paul Edmondson from the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.

Greenblatt is one of the most influential writers on Renaissance literature, and his latest book Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare’s Greatest Rival, Christopher Marlowe is an evocative and riveting account of Marlowe’s life and career, illustrating the excitement, brilliance, and danger of the age.

11/06/2026

Watch Sir Ian McKellen recreate Lord Olivier's 1989 'Save The Rose' speech, as he unveils a Blue Plaque honouring him.

08/05/2026

This will be fascinating – please join us! Can't make it? A catch-up link will be made available upon request to anyone who buys a ticket for the talk but who can’t attend live on the day.

Monday 11 May at 6.30pm online. £8 / £5 students & Friends www.roseplayhouse.org.uk/whats-on
BEFORE THE ROSE: MARLOWE AT THE CURTAIN

Join Dr Callan Davies as he takes you back to the years around 1587, when The Rose is being built on Bankside while Christopher Marlowe is living north of the river up in Shoreditch, a stone’s throw from The Curtain Playhouse.

His ‘mighty lines’ take shape in its shadow and, perhaps, within its large, rectangular perimeter – a space with very different theatrical architecture to Philip Henslowe’s Rose.

Discover how reimagining part of Marlowe’s canon at or around The Curtain creates a longer, richer spatial history for The Rose’s repertory, and learn how, by drawing connections between 16th-century London playing venues, it is possible to appreciate the fluidity and adaptability of the commercial plays they hosted in a new way.

Callan Davies is Lecturer in Seventeenth-Century Literature and Culture at the University of Southampton.

His latest book, What is a Playhouse? England at Play, 1520-1620, featured as one of History Today’s Books of the Year 2023, and his first monograph, Strangeness in Jacobean Drama, was shortlisted for the Shakespeare’s Globe Book Award 2023.

His next book, The Curtain: The Story of a Shakespearean Playhouse, will be published by Yale next year.

28/04/2026

Monday 11 May at 6.30pm online. £8 / £5 students & Friends www.roseplayhouse.org.uk/whats-on
BEFORE THE ROSE: MARLOWE AT THE CURTAIN

Join Dr Callan Davies as he takes you back to the years around 1587, when The Rose is being built on Bankside while Christopher Marlowe is living north of the river up in Shoreditch, a stone’s throw from The Curtain Playhouse.

His ‘mighty lines’ take shape in its shadow and, perhaps, within its large, rectangular perimeter – a space with very different theatrical architecture to Philip Henslowe’s Rose.

Discover how reimagining part of Marlowe’s canon at or around The Curtain creates a longer, richer spatial history for The Rose’s repertory, and learn how, by drawing connections between 16th-century London playing venues, it is possible to appreciate the fluidity and adaptability of the commercial plays they hosted in a new way.

Callan Davies is Lecturer in Seventeenth-Century Literature and Culture at the University of Southampton.

His latest book, What is a Playhouse? England at Play, 1520-1620, featured as one of History Today’s Books of the Year 2023, and his first monograph, Strangeness in Jacobean Drama, was shortlisted for the Shakespeare’s Globe Book Award 2023.

His next book, The Curtain: The Story of a Shakespearean Playhouse, will be published by Yale next year.

26/04/2026

REMINDER: This Monday 27 April at 6.30pm online. Tickets: £8 / £5 students & Friends – www.roseplayhouse.org.uk/whats-on

Although we have had the big Finale for our The National Lottery Heritage Fund supported Page of Plymouth project earlier this month, there's still another fascinating online talk about the world of Elizabethan theatre, presented in partnership with The Rose Bankside, to look forward to. So join us THIS MONDAY for...

🎶 Ballads as Theatre “Merch” in Shakespeare’s London
📅 Monday 27th April 🕡 6.30pm 💻 ONLINE
with Professor Tiffany Stern ( Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham)

Why were theatrical broadsheet ballads sold outside The Rose and other playhouses?

Who wrote them, printed them, and sung them?

And why and how were they connected with the plays performed inside?

Playwrights often started out as song-writers, and regularly product-placed ballads within their dramas. Acting as both advertisements and souvenirs, ballads constituted a crucial – though now largely forgotten – form of theatrical merchandise and musical paratext.

Join Professor Tiffany Stern of the Shakespeare Institute as she introduces the ballad merchants – or ‘balladmongers’ – who sung and sold ballads, and the printers who published them, and provides examples of ballads to be found in plays by Ben Jonson, sung after plays as jigs or ‘themes’ by clowns, and performed as summaries for the plays of Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Kyd.

Tiffany Stern is Professor of Shakespeare and Early Modern Drama at The Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, having previously been Professor of Early Modern Drama at Oxford University.

Her new book, Ballad Business: Selling Early Modern Theatre, was published by Cambridge University Press in February this year.

Book now at https://www.roseplayhouse.org.uk/whats-on and visit the Literature Works website to find out more about Page of Plymouth, from the true crime to the lost play, to all the amazing creative work inspired by the tragic tale of Eulalia that we've seen in the past 6 months or so.

19/04/2026

We're in this! On BBC Radio 3 & BBC Sounds: The Death and Life of Christopher Marlowe, written & presented by Professor Jerry Brotton – ten 14 minute episodes, releasing 20 April - 1 May, at 9.45pm www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002v6z8

Produced by Melissa FitzGerald.
Christopher Marlowe read by Justice Ritchie.
Other voices read by Tonderai Munyevu.

17/04/2026

Monday 27 April @ 6.30pm online. £5 / £8
More info & book: www.roseplayhouse.org.uk/whats-on
Join Professor Tiffany Stern to discover why theatrical broadsheet ballads were sold outside The Rose and other playhouses, who wrote them them, printed them & sung them, and why & how they were connected with the plays performed inside.

12/04/2026

Monday 13 April @ 6.30pm (1.30pm EST) online. Book: www.roseplayhouse.org.uk/whats-on
IN CONVERSATION – JESSE BERGER, Founder & Artistic Director of Red Bull Theater, New York

Join acclaimed American theatre-maker Jesse Berger in conversation with The Rose's Ben Prusiner, as he talks about his career in the arts, and shares his perspectives on producing classical theatre for modern audiences.

Learn first-hand about Red Bull’s off-Broadway revivals of plays including Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II, and William Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, which is currently performing in New York to rave reviews and has just received a Lucille Lortel Award nomination for Outstanding Revival, and has extended its run to 3 May.

Tickets £5 / £8
A catch-up link to a recording of the talk will be made available on request for anyone who buys a ticket but who – for whatever reason – can't attend live on the day

11/04/2026

Monday 13 April, 6.30pm BST / 1.30pm EST online & on demand: JESSE BERGER IN CONVERSATION – talking Titus, The Rose & Red Bull Theater. More info & book: www.roseplayhouse.org.uk/whats-on

Where the blood was first spilled. 🩸
Did you know Titus Andronicus originally premiered at The Rose Playhouse in London—and the archaeological site still exists today? Join an online conversation with Founder and Producing Artistic Director Jesse Berger and Ben Prusiner of The Rose Playhouse as they discuss Titus, The Rose, and the history of Red Bull Theater. Monday, April 13th, 1:30pm EST (also available on-demand).

Details and tickets at www.roseplayhouse.org.uk/whats-on

Photo by Carol Rosegg