How might the work on gender in Twelfth Night be challenged by trans theory, narratives, and experience?

Covering the changes in Shakespeare editorial theory and practice over the decades between the publication of the Oxford Shakespeare (1986) and the New Oxford Shakespeare (2016), this article surveys a range of modern texts with different rationales and aimed at different readerships. The article has three sections: the imagery associated with…[Read more]

My aim in this essay is to draw together two areas of study from cinema and theatre. The first is the theory of popular genres, their evolutionary cycle, and their role in the industrial development of Hollywood in the first half of the twentieth century, as explored by theorists and historians of cinema. The second is the early modern genre of…[Read more]

Programme Note for Donmar Theatre’s ‘Measure for Measure’, directed Josie Rourke, opens 10/18.

Engages with questions of historicism and presentism in the modern performance of early modern drama, and compares Ben Jonson with Alfred Hitchcock.

Suggests that we should consider the stage directions in Shakespeare’s early texts, particularly the 1623 Folio, as snippets of narrative or free indirect discourse, rather than as clues to or for performance.

Describes a previously unrecorded corrected proof sheet in a copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio (1623)

Discusses Shakespeare’s Richard II and questions of censorship and editorial control

Review of the opening season of the Sam Wanamaker playhouse, London – The Knight of the Burning Pestle and The Duchess of Malfi

Discusses the invention of Shylock’s Jewishness as a reaction to Sir Henry Irving’s popular Victorian production