Timeline
Timeline
From a real Plymouth murder in 1591 to Ben Jonson and Thomas Dekker taking up their pens eight years later, this timeline follows the key moments behind Page of Plymouth, and the archive discoveries that helped bring the story back to life
Eulalia Glanville, a young woman from Tavistock, was forced by her parents to marry the wealthy older merchant William Page instead of George Strangwidge, the man she loved. Trapped in the marriage, she conspired with George to be rid of her husband. Robert Priddis and Thomas Stone, paid to carry out the killing, entered Page's bedroom one February night and murdered him, trying to make it look like natural causes. His sister, Mary Harris, spotted blood on the body, realised he'd been murdered, and raised the alarm.
Robert Priddis, Thomas Stone, George Strangwidge and Eulalia Page were tried for the murder and executed at Barnstaple.
The crime became notorious - the story was featured in a 1591 pamphlet Sundrye strange and inhumaine murthers, lately committed and in a trio of ballads attributed to Thomas Deloney.
Theatre manager Philip Henslowe notes in his account book a loan of 40 shillings so Ben Jonson and Thomas Dekker can be paid for a new play they're writing, called "Pagge of Plemoth."
Henslowe issues a loan of £6 for "fulle payment" of "the lamentable tragedie of pagge of plemoth."
Henslowe loans £10 to buy women's gowns for the production. The play is performed at the Rose Playhouse in London, quite possibly drawing on the 1591 pamphlet and Thomas Deloney's ballads for its plot.
The first talk of the Page of Plymouth project is broadcast by the Rose Playhouse in London, where the lost play would once have been performed.
The project reaches its finale at the Barbican Theatre, where many who took part in the workshops and events gather to revisit and reimagine this story of Elizabethan Plymouth.