Phyllis Fay Horton Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus
Department of English
Department of Comparative Literature
Chair, Theater and Performance Studies

Office: Gates-Blake 510
Phone: (773) 702-9899
bevi@uchicago.edu

It is my pleasure and my honor to teach drama at the University of Chicago, focusing on Shakespeare and his contemporaries (Jonson, Marlowe, Webster, Middleton, Dekker, etc.), as well as medieval drama and then the entire sweep of Western drama from Aeschylus and Sophocles down to Caryl Churchill and Tom Stoppard. In addition to courses on Shakespeare, Renaissance drama, and medieval drama, I co-teach in Theater and Performance Studies ((variously with Heidi Coleman, Director of University Theater, John Muse, English Department, and Drew Dir, resident dramaturg at Court Theatre) a two-quarter sequence called The History and Theory of Drama from the 5th century B.C. down to the present day. I am Chair of Theater and Performance Studies. My critical writing and scholarship reflect to a large degree these same passionate interests. I am a senior editor of the Revels Plays, which publishes critical editions of plays of Shakespeare's contemporaries, and I am senior editor of a series of paperbacks called Revels Student Editions. Until recently and for many years I taught in a core humanities course at the University of Chicago on Greek Thought and Literature, from Homer and Herodotus down to Aristophanes and Plato. Here, and in a course on the Renaissance that I love to teach as well, I get a chance to teach nondramatic poetry and prose!

Work in Progress

I am one of three senior editors of the forthcoming Cambridge edition of The Works of Ben Jonson, scheduled for 2012. Work will continue thereafter on the Electronic Edition as part of the same project. I am also preparing an on-line edition of Hamlet for Internet Shakespeare Editions. A print edition of As You Like It will be published in 2012 to accompany my online edition of the play for Internet Shakespeare Editions. My edition of Medieval Drama will appear soon in a second edition. See below under 'Recent Articles and Writings' for other items forthcoming.

Courses

Graduate: History and Theory of Drama I and II; Renaissance English drama; medieval drama; focused topics in Shakespeare including The Greek and Roman Plays, The Young Shakespeare and the Drama That He Knew, Shakespeare at the Opera

Undergraduate: History and Theory of Drama I and II; Renaissance English drama; medieval drama; focused topics in Shakespeare including The Greek and Roman Plays, The Young Shakespeare and the Drama That He Knew, Shakespeare at the Opera

Selected Publications

• Murder Most Foul: "Hamlet" Through the Ages (Oxford University Press, 2011)
• Shakespeare and Biography (Oxford University Press, 2010)
• Shakespeare's Ideas: More Things in Heaven and Earth (2008)
• This Wide and Universal Theater: Shakespeare in Performance Then and Now (University of Chicago Press, 2007)
• Shakespeare:  The Seven Ages of Human Experience (Blackwell Publishing, 2002)
• with Peter Holbrook (eds.).  The Politics of the Stuart Court Masque (Cambridge University Press, 1998)
• Action Is Eloquence:  Shakespeare's Language of Gesture (Harvard University Press, 1984)
• Tudor Drama and Politics:  A Critical Approach to Topical Meaning (Harvard University Press, 1968)
• From "Mankind" to Marlowe:  Growth of Structure in the Popular Drama of Tudor England (Harvard University Press, 1962)
• ed. The Bantam Shakespeare, 2nd. ed., 29 Individual Paperbacks (Various Dates)
• ed. The Complete Works of Shakespeare, 6th ed. (Longman, 2008)
• ed. Norton Anthology of Renaissance Drama (Norton, 2002)
• ed. Troilus and Cressida (Arden, 1998)
• ed. Antony and Cleopatra (Cambridge University Press, 1990)
• ed. Henry IV, Part I (Oxford University Press, 1987)
• ed. Medieval Drama (Houghton Mifflin, 1975)

Recent Articles and Writings

• "The Alchemist: The Critical Backstory" (Commissioned by Helen Ostovich and Erin Julian, for a forthcoming Continuum volume on The Alchemist)
• "The Debate about Shakespeare and Religion," in Shakespeare and the Varieties of Early Modern Religious Thought, ed. David Loewenstein and Michael Whitmore (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming)
• "Shakespeare Spinoffs: The Merchant of Venice," in The Shakespeare Spinoffs, ed. Amy Scott-Douglas, Courtney Lehmann, and Marguerite Ripley, Reproducing Shakespeare, ed. Kathy Rowe and Tom Cartelli (Palgrave MacMillan, forthcoming)
• "A World Elsewhere: Shakespeare's Representation of National Types on the Continent and in the British Isles," in The Cambridge World Shakespeare Encyclopedia: Cambridge World Shakespeare Online, ed. Bruce Smith and Aimara da Cunha Resende (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming)
• "The Shifting Canon: Trends in Recent Renaissance Drama Collections," Renaissance Drama 40, a fortieth year anniversary issue, ed. William West and Jeffrey Masten (Forthcoming, 2012)
• "Staging Options in the Three Early Texts of Hamlet," in Early Modern Texts and Performance: Studies in Honor of Susan Fischer, ed. Barbara Fujica and Katherine Faull (Forthcoming, 2012)
• "Sonnet 129," in The Facts on File Companion to Shakespeare, ed. William Baker and Ken Womack, 5 vols. (Facts on File, 2012)
• "Marriage Negotiations as Instruments of Diplomacy in Shakespeare's History Plays" (Prague Congress meeting of the Shakespeare International Association, July 18-22, 2011)
• "Shakespeare's Development of Theatrical Genres; Genre as Adaptation in the Comedies and Histories," in Shakespeare and Genre: From Early Modern Inheritances to Postmodern Legacies, ed. Anthony R. Guneratne (St. Martin's Press, 2011), 19-37
• "The Magic of Theatre," in Shakespeare Theatre Company: Guide to the Seasons's Plays, 2010-2011 Season, 10-13
• Consultant and member of the advisory board, authoring various entries, The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th ed. (University of Chicago Press, 2010)

Education

Ph.D., Harvard University, 1959. Teaching at Chicago since 1967.