David Bevington

David Martin Bevington (May 13, 1931 – August 2, 2019) was an American literary scholar. He was the Phyllis Fay Horton Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in the Humanities and in English Language & Literature, Comparative Literature, and the college at the University of Chicago, where he taught since 1967, as well as chair of Theatre and Performance Studies.[1] "One of the most learned and devoted of Shakespeareans,"[2] so called by Harold Bloom, he specialized in British drama of the Renaissance, and edited and introduced the complete works of William Shakespeare in both the 29-volume, Bantam Classics paperback editions and the single-volume Longman edition. After accomplishing this feat, Bevington was often cited as the only living scholar to have personally edited Shakespeare's complete corpus.

He also edited the Norton Anthology of Renaissance Drama and an important anthology of Medieval English Drama, the latter of which was just re-released by Hackett for the first time in nearly four decades.[3][4] Bevington's editorial scholarship is so extensive that Richard Strier, an early modern colleague at the University of Chicago, was moved to comment: "Every time I turn around, he has edited a new Renaissance text. Bevington has endless energy for editorial projects."[5] In addition to his work as an editor, he published studies of Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, and the Stuart Court Masque, among others, though it is for his work as an editor that he is primarily known.

Despite formally retiring, Bevington continued to teach and publish. Most recently he authored Shakespeare and Biography, a study of the history of Shakespearean biography and of such biographers,[6] as well as Murder Most Foul: Hamlet Through the Ages.[7][8] In August, 2012, after a decade of research, he released the first complete edition of Ben Jonson published in over a half-century with Ian Donaldson and Martin Butler from the Cambridge Press.[9] In addition to his preeminence among scholars of William Shakespeare, he was a much beloved teacher, winning a Quantrell Award in 1979.

  1. ^ "Theater and Performance Studies | UChicago Arts | The University of Chicago". Taps.uchicago.edu. Archived from the original on 2012-07-27. Retrieved 2017-01-09.
  2. ^ David Bevington (May 2009). This Wide and Universal Theater: Shakespeare in Performance, Then and Now. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226044798 – via Amazon.com.
  3. ^ "David Bevington". Aug 23, 2004. Archived from the original on 2004-08-23. Retrieved Aug 6, 2019.
  4. ^ David Bevington (2012). Medieval Drama. Hackett. ISBN 9781603848381.
  5. ^ "Bevington to repeat Ryerson Lecture". News.uchicago.edu. Retrieved 2017-01-09.
  6. ^ David Bevington (10 June 2010). Shakespeare and Biography (Oxford Shakespeare Topics). OUP Oxford. ISBN 9780199586479 – via Amazon.com.
  7. ^ "Bevington, Fischer-Galati, Maskin, Nussbaum: The 2010 Centennial Medalists". Harvard Magazine. 2015-07-12. Retrieved 2017-01-09.
  8. ^ David Bevington (23 June 2011). Murder Most Foul: Hamlet Through the Ages. OUP Oxford. ISBN 9780199599103 – via Amazon.com.
  9. ^ Ben Jonson; David Bevington; Martin Butler; Ian Donaldson. The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson 7 Volume Set. ISBN 9780521782463.