Item 10 - "Sixteenth-Century Drama in St John's College, Cambridge"

Dr. Sandra Billington was born on 10th September 1943. After working in theatre including gaining a scholarship to RADA and working with Mike Leigh, she attended Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge. There, she became fascinated by folklore, theatre and disorder in the Middle Ages. She was Lecturer and Reader in Renaissance Theatre at the University of Glasgow from 1979 to 2003, a specialist in Shakespeare and folklore. She was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh from 1998 to 2005.
Her books include ‘Mock Kings in Medieval Society and Renaissance Drama’ (1991), ‘Midsummer: A cultural sub-text from Chretien de Troyes to Jean Michel’ (2001), and ‘Coming up for the third time’ (2011). She also edited ‘The Concept of the Goddess’ with Miranda Aldhouse-Green in 1986. Her book ‘A Social History of the Fool’ won the Folklore Society's Katharine Briggs Folklore Award in 1984. She also wrote an article on 16th Century Drama in St. John’s College, Cambridge which was published in February 1978 in the ‘Review of English Studies’ Vol. XXIX, Issue 113.