Devised as an entertainment for a Tudor monarch and engaged with matters particularly pertinent to the Elizabethan state, Galatea might be seen, paradoxically, as a parable for our time. Inhabiting a world threatened with inundation and engaged in a process of change, the characters find themselves locked in a series of transgressive situations that speak directly to contemporary experience and twenty-first-century critical concerns. Same-sex relationships, shifts of authority, and the destabilization of meaning all lend the drama a surprising modernity, making it at once the most accessible...

Was anyone undone by fire, or turned to ashes through desire? Two young trans people find love whilst escaping oppression; a shipwrecked migrant searches for his family; goddesses clash; parents fret; an alchemist brews magic and a teenage Cupid sets hearts on fire - causing chaos and near disaster. And all the while, time is running out! Galatea is an unapologetically queer tale of love, magic, and the importance of welcoming outsiders. Galatea was originally written in the 1580s by John Lyly, William Shakespeare's best-selling but now long-forgotten contemporary, inspiring...