Welcome to the website of The Malone Society, an organisation devoted to textual scholarship of late-medieval and early modern drama. The Society was founded in 1906 at the initiative of A.W. Pollard, and for over a century we have published (almost) every year edited volumes of early printed and manuscript texts of both well-known and neglected plays. We also publish collections of documentary material relating to the performance and reception of early drama. Our best-known publications include W.W. Greg’s edition of Sir Thomas More, a collaborative history play to which Shakespeare may have contributed, 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.
Our membership is international and open to anyone interested in early drama. Members receive our annual volumes and are able to buy books from our backlist at low prices. For further details, please see our membership page.
We would be happy to receive proposals for future editions; please see our guidelines for editors.
In addition to our publications, we 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. His portrait appears on the right-hand side of this page.