BEVINGTON, David M(artin) 1931-

PERSONAL:

Born May 13, 1931, in New York, NY; son of Merle Mowbray and Helen (Smith) Bevington; married Margaret Bronson Brown, June 4, 1953; children: Stephen Raymond, Philip Landon, Katharine Helen, Sarah Amelia. Ethnicity: "WASP." Education: Harvard University, A.B. (cum laude), 1952, M.A., 1957, Ph.D., 1959. Politics: Democrat. Religion: "Lapsed Episcopalian." Hobbies and other interests: Chamber music and playing the viola.

ADDRESSES:

Home—5747 South Blackstone Ave., Chicago, IL 60637. Office—Department of English, University of Chicago, 5801 S. Ellis, Chicago, IL 60637. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, teaching fellow, 1957-59, instructor, 1959-61; University of Virginia, Charlottesville, assistant professor, 1961-64, associate professor, 1964-66, professor of English, 1966-67; University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, visiting professor, 1967-68, of English, 1968—, Phyllis Fay Horton distinguished service professor in the humanities, 1985—. Visiting professor, New York University summer school, 1963, Harvard University summer school, 1967, University of Hawaii summer school, 1970, Northwestern University, 1974. Folger Institute Renaissance and Eighteenth-Century Studies, senior consultant and seminar leader, 1976-77, 1987-88. Military service: U.S. Navy, 1952-55; became lieutenant junior grade.

MEMBER:

American Association of University Professors (acting president, Virginia conference, 1962-63, president, 1963-64), Shakespeare Association of America (president, 1976-77, 1995-96), American Academy of Arts and Sciences, American Philosophical Society, Renaissance English Text Society (president, 1978—), Modern Language Association of America, Renaissance Society of America.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Guggenheim fellowships, 1964-65, 1981-82; senior fellow, Southeastern Institute of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, summer, 1975.

WRITINGS:

EDITOR

William Shakespeare, As You Like It, Bantam Classics (New York, NY), 1988.

William Shakespeare, The Comedy of Errors, Bantam Classics (New York, NY), 1988.

William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Bantam Classics (New York, NY), 1988.

William Shakespeare, Henry IV: Part One, Bantam Classics (New York, NY), 1988.

William Shakespeare, Henry IV: Part Two, Bantam Classics (New York, NY), 1988.

William Shakespeare, Henry V, Bantam Classics (New York, NY), 1988.

William Shakespeare, Henry VI: Parts One, Two, and Three, Bantam Classics (New York, NY), 1988.

William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Bantam Classics (New York, NY), 1988.

William Shakespeare, King John and Henry VIII, Bantam Classics (New York, NY), 1988.

William Shakespeare, King Lear, Bantam Classics (New York, NY), 1988.

William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Bantam Classics (New York, NY), 1988.

William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure; All's Well That Ends Well; and Troilus and Cressida, Bantam Classics (New York, NY), 1988.

William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Bantam Classics (New York, NY), 1988.

William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Bantam Classics (New York, NY), 1988.

William Shakespeare, Much Ado about Nothing, Bantam Classics (New York, NY), 1988.

William Shakespeare, Othello, Bantam Classics (New York, NY), 1988.

William Shakespeare, Richard II, Bantam Classics (New York, NY), 1988.

William Shakespeare, Richard III, Bantam Classics (New York, NY), 1988.

William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Bantam Classics (New York, NY), 1988.

William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew, Bantam Classics (New York, NY), 1988.

William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Bantam Classics (New York, NY), 1988.

William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night or, What You Will, Bantam Classics (New York, NY), 1988.

William Shakespeare, The Late Romances, Bantam Classics (New York, NY), 1988.

William Shakespeare, The Poems, Bantam Classics (New York, NY), 1988.

William Shakespeare, Four Comedies (includes The Taming of the Shrew, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice, and Twelfth Night),

William Shakespeare, Three Classical Tragedies (includes Titus Andronicus, Timon of Athens, and Coriolanus),

William Shakespeare, Four Tragedies (includes Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth),

William Shakespeare, Three Early Comedies (includes Love's Labors Lost, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and The Merry Wives of Windsor).

OTHER

From Mankind to Marlowe, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1962.

(Editor) Shakespeare, I Henry VI, Penguin (Baltimore, MD), 1966.

(Editor) Twentieth-Century Interpretations of "Hamlet," Prentice-Hall (Englewood Cliffs, NJ), 1968.

Tudor Drama and Politics, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1968.

(Editor) The Macro Plays, Johnson Reprint (New York, NY), 1972.

(Editor) Hardin Craig, The Complete Works of Shakespeare, revised edition (Bevington was not associated with earlier editions), Scott, Foresman (Glenview, IL), 1972, 3rd edition, 1980.

(Editor) Hardin Craig, An Introduction to Shakespeare, revised edition (Bevington was not associated with earlier editions), Scott, Foresman (Glenview, IL), 1975.

(Editor) Medieval Drama, Houghton (Boston, MA), 1975.

(Compiler) Shakespeare, AHM Publishing (Arlington Heights, IL), 1978.

(Editor, with Jay L. Halio) Shakespeare, Pattern of Excelling Nature: Shakespeare Criticism in Honor of America's Bicentennial: From the International Shakespeare Association Congress, Washington, D.C., April 1976, University of Delaware Press (Newark, DE), 1978.

Action Is Eloquence: Shakespeare's Language of Gesture, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1984.

(With others) Homo, Memento Finis: The Iconography of Just Judgment in Medieval Art and Drama: Papers, Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University (Kalamazoo, MI), 1985.

(Editor) Henry IV, Parts I and II: Critical Essays, Garland (New York, NY), 1986.

(Editor) William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part I, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1987.

(Editor) William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1990.

(Editor) John Lyly, Sappho and Phao, published with Campaspe, edited by G. K. Hunter, Manchester University Press (New York, NY), 1991.

(Editor, with Eric Rasmussen) Doctor Faustus A-and B-Texts (1604, 1616): Christopher Marlowe and His Collaborator and Revisers, Manchester University Press (New York, NY), 1993.

(Editor, with Richard Strier) The Theatrical City: Culture, Theatre, and Politics in London, 1576-1649, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1995.

(Editor, with Eric Rasmussen) Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine, Parts I and II; Doctor Faustus, A-and B-Texts; The Jew of Malta; Edward II, Oxford University Press (Mew York, NY), 1995.

(Editor) Christopher Marlowe, The Jew of Malta, Manchester University Press (New York, NY), 1996.

(Editor) Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy, Manchester University Press (New York, NY), 1996.

(Editor) John Lyly, Endymion, Manchester University Press (New York, NY), 1996.

(Editor) The Complete Works of Shakespeare, updated 4th edition, Longman (New York, NY), 1997.

(Editor, with Peter Holbrook) The Politics of the Stuart Court Masque, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1998.

(Editor, with Brian Parker) Ben Jonson, Volpone, Manchester University Press (New York, NY), 1999.

(Editor) John Lyly, Midas, published with Galatea, edited by G. K. Hunter, Manchester University Press (New York, NY), 2000.

Shakespeare: An Introduction, Blackwell (Malden, MA), 2002.

(Editor) The Necessary Shakespeare, Longman (New York, NY), 2002.

(Editor, with Lars Engle, Katharine Eisaman Maus, and Eric Rasmussen) English Renaissance Drama: A Norton Anthology, Norton (New York, NY), 2003.

WORK IN PROGRESS:

Editing, with others, an edition of The Complete Works of Ben Jonson, to be published by Cambridge University Press in multiple volumes; writing essays about patronage of masques and court entertainments in Tudor and Stuart England, on The Tempest and the marriage of James I's daughter Elizabeth in 1613, on Timon of Athens and King James's fiscal recklessness, on The Comedy of Errors and the dramaturgy of plays written around 1590, and others.

SIDELIGHTS:

David M. Bevington has devoted much of his career to the works of William Shakespeare, but he also has edited and explained the plays of Shakespeare contemporaries such as Christopher Marlowe and John Lyly, the latter of whom was somewhat neglected by scholars for a time. In addition to these Renaissance-era playwrights, Bevington is interested in classical Greek, medieval, and modern drama, and in the relationships between politics and the arts and between literature and music, particularly opera.

Examples of Bevington's work on the political aspects of the perfoming arts include The Theatrical City: Culture, Theatre, and Politics in London, 1576-1649, and The Politics of the Stuart Court Masque, both of which he coedited. The Theatrical City offers pairs of essays—one historical, one a work of literary criticism—on a given theatrical event, with "theatrical" being defined broadly enough to include public spectacles such as the execution of English king Charles I. Bevington contributes a critical essay on Thomas Dekker's comic rags-to-riches play The Shoemaker's Holiday, paired with a piece by Paul Seaver placing the same work in a historical context. "They each provide a useful analysis of Dekker's juggling of comic situations with social commentary," related Sheila T. Cavanaugh in Shakespeare Studies. Several critics thought the collection an important work of interdisciplinary scholarship. "If the editors' aim is to encourage dialogue between synchronically placed contributions," commented Gordon McMullan in Notes and Queries, Bevington and his fellow editors are to be commended because "they have pieced together a collection which retains a strong flavour of such dialogue." Cavanaugh found The Theatrical City "a substantial contribution to early modern studies" that "offers access to a talented range of literary critics and historians."

The Politics of the Stuart Court Masque deals with entertainments incorporating musical, dance, and dramatic elements that were produced for royal audiences during the reigns of James I and Charles I in the early seventeenth century. Various factions often sought to convey a political message in the production. An essay by Bevington compares the masque-within-a-play in Shakespeare's The Tempest with Thomas Campion's Lord's Masque. The piece "gives a persuasive account" of what the playwrights wanted audiences to feel, wrote R. Malcolm Smuts in Shakespeare Studies, although he added that Bevington provides "no direct evidence of how actual spectators reacted." The book overall, Smuts continued, "amply demonstrates how far historicist interpretations of the masque have progressed since the 1960s," but "also shows how much work remains to be done in this field," with little information available on audience response and scholars therefore basing their arguments largely on analysis of the texts of the masques.

Just as those works have aimed to place theatrical works in a historical and political context, Bevington's work on individual playwrights seeks to place them and their writings in context, both of their times and of the body of scholarship that has grown up around them. Bevington's edition of Lyly's Sappho and Phao, published with George Hunter's edition of the playwright's Campaspe, includes "a wealth of scholarly commentary" that will be greatly useful to modern readers, remarked Michael Pincombe in Notes and Queries. Bevington makes a case for the relevance of Shakespeare to modern readers, including students, in Shakespeare: An Introduction. He has produced a "solid" work that is likely to help young people appreciate the Bard, commented Library Journal reviewer Shana C. Fair.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Library Journal, July, 2002, Shana C. Fair, review of Shakespeare: An Introduction, p. 78.

Notes and Queries, March, 1993, Michael Pincombe, review of Campaspe and Sappho and Phao, p. 91; June, 1997, Gordon McMullan, review of The Theatrical City: Culture, Theatre, and Politics in London, 1576-1649, p. 269.

Renaissance Quarterly, winter, 1997, Peter Erickson, review of The Theatrical City, p. 1204; winter, 1998, R. A. Foakes, review of The Complete Works of Shakespeare, p. 1320.

Review of English Studies, August, 1997, N. W. Bawcutt, review of The Theatrical City, p. 392.

Shakespeare Studies, annual, 1997, Sheila T. Cavanaugh, review of The Theatrical City, p. 296; annual, 2000, R. Malcolm Smuts, review of The Politics of the Stuart Court Masque, p. 295.