Simon Palfrey

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Simon Palfrey is an English Scholar at Oxford University and a Fellow in English at Brasenose College, Oxford University.[1] He specialises in Shakespeare and Renaissance literature.[2]

Palfrey was born in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia, grew up in Australia and was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University. He is known for his approach to Shakespeare's work, in which he discusses the dynamism of the playwright's language, its psychological effects and the actorly and bodily decisions generated by word-use.

His book Doing Shakespeare has been called "an original and long-overdue resource for theatre scholar-artists."[3] It was listed as an "International Book of the Year" in 2004 by the Times Literary Supplement. In the TLS, Jonathan Bate said that although the work was "sometimes wayward," Palfrey "tease[s] out so much so lucidly and (usually) so persuasively from the intricacies of Shakespearean language."[4] His earlier book, Late Shakespeare: A New World of Worlds was described as "a valuable contribution to the political reading of Renaissance literary forms" and challenged the traditional reading of Shakespeare's four romances.[5] Russ McDonald writing in Shakespeare Quarterly described Late Shakespeare as "original, quirky, occasionally brilliant, and almost always demanding."[6] Palfrey's methods have been both praised and deplored as a mixture, idiosyncratic, and bastardized, and even in largely positive reviews his writing has been called a "torture to read."[7]

[edit] Publications

  • Late Shakespeare: A New World of Worlds , Oxford University Press, (1997), ISBN13: 9780198186892.
  • Doing Shakespeare (Arden Shakespeare Third Series), Thomson Learning EMEA, (2004), ISBN-13: 9781904271543.[8]
  • "Macbeth and Kierkegaard" in Shakespeare Survey, Volume 57: "Macbeth and its Afterlife," (2004), Cambridge, Edited by: Peter Holland.[9]
  • Shakespeare in Parts, co-written with Tiffany Sterne (to be published September, 2007, by Oxford University Press). ISBN-13: 978-0199272051

Editor, with Ewan Fernie, of Shakespeare Now! series:[10]

  • Shakespeare Thinking by Philip Davis, (2007).
  • Shakespeare Inside: The Bard Behind Bars by Amy Scott-Douglass, (2007).
  • Godless Shakespeare by Eric Mallin, (2007).
  • To Be or Not to Be by Douglas Bruster, (2007).

[edit] References

  1. ^ List of Brasenose Fellows
  2. ^ English at Brasenose College
  3. ^ Review by Adrianne Adderley, Theater History Studies January 2006
  4. ^ Review copied from the Times Literary Supplement, October, 2004, with other reviews
  5. ^ Stephen Cohen, review in Sixteenth Century Journal 29.4 (1998), pp. 1166-68.
  6. ^ McDonald, Shakespeare Quarterly, 5.2 (2001), pp. 298-300. (Project MUSE (subscription))
  7. ^ McDonald, op. cit. p. 300
  8. ^ Product Guide: Doing Shakespeare - Arden Shakespeare
  9. ^ Shakespeare Survey, Volume 57: Macbeth and its Afterlife
  10. ^ Shakespeare Now!
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