Gentleness and Nobility (LIVE Archive Recording)

Beyond is sponsored by The Malone Society: The permanent utility of original texts

Welcome to our live stage recording of Gentleness and Nobility by John Heywood with John Rastell (though we've probably cut most Rastell from this edit). It's not designed as an audio adaptation, this is simply recorded from a distance on stage. However, it is a fairly complete recording and hopefully of some use. It was recorded as part of our Entertaining Henry season on Saturday 21st June 2025 at the Quay Theatre, Sudbury.

With Valentina Vinci as The Knight, Liza Graham as The Merchant and Robert Crighton as The Ploughman
The Backstage Technical Manager was Roel Fox.
Additional Music from zapsplat.com
Many thanks to Joe Fawcett, Tom Lagden, and everyone behind the scenes at the Quay.

We've done a lot on John Heywood, and this play - this is the third production available on the podcast, the first a full cast audio adaptation and the second an different archive recording (with a different cut of the text). There are also exploring sessions and more. We like this play.
The entire Entertaining Henry season was recorded, including most of the rehearsal period - all of this material can be found on our patreon feed.
Our patrons received a mix of this episode in November 2025 - over 6 months in advance.
The Beyond Shakespeare Podcast is supported by its patrons – become a patron and you get to choose the plays we work on next. Go to www.patreon.com/beyondshakespeare - or if you'd like to buy us a coffee at ko-fi https://ko-fi.com/beyondshakespeare - or if you want to give us some feedback, email us at admin@beyondshakespeare.org, follow us on Twitter, Facebook & Instagram @BeyondShakes or go to our website: https://beyondshakespeare.org
You can also subscribe to our YouTube channel where (most of) our exploring sessions live - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLa4pXxGZFwTX4QSaB5XNdQ
The Beyond Shakespeare Podcast is hosted and produced by Robert Crighton.

About our sponsors - the Malone Society. The Society was founded in 1906 at the initiative of A.W. Pollard, and for over a century they have published (almost) every year edited volumes of early printed and manuscript texts of both well-known and neglected plays. They also publish collections of documentary material relating to the performance and reception of early drama. Their best-known publications include W.W. Greg’s edition of Sir Thomas More, a collaborative history play, and A.C. Dunstan’s edition of the earliest surviving original play in English to have been written by a woman, Elizabeth Cary’s The Tragedy of Mariam.
Their membership is international and open to anyone interested in early drama. Members receive their annual volumes and are able to buy books from their backlist at low prices.
In addition to their publications, they support scholarship of early drama through fellowships and research grants, an annual prize for graduate students, and performances and symposia.
The Society is named after Edmond Malone, born in Dublin in 1741, a great editor, textual scholar and theatre historian, whose work continues to shape studies in early drama.