Professor Laurie Maguire

Background

I received my BA and PhD from London University and my MA from the Shakespeare Institute (University of Birmingham). From 1988 to 1999 I taught at the University of Ottawa. I was tutorial fellow at Magdalen from 1999-2021, and in 2021 I was elected emeritus fellow at Magdalen. I still teach an annual course for the Medical School on  Medical Humanities. I have held major fellowships from the Leverhulme Trust, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and the Folger Shakespeare Library.

Research Interests

My research centres on the English Renaissance (mainly, but not exclusively, drama) but within this sphere my interests are broad: textual studies, theatre history, classical influences on Renaissance writers, translation and language-learning, contemporary performances of Shakespeare’s plays, literature and medicine, Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Nashe. I am currently working on several book projects: a biography of Judith Shakespeare (one of Shakespeare’s daughters); a book on dramatic collaboration (written collaboratively with Emma Smith of Hertford College); a book on medical humanities.

Selected Publications

• The Rhetoric of the Page (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020)
• Othello (London: Arden series, 2014)
• Thirty Great Myths about Shakespeare (co-authored with Emma Smith) (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013)
• Helen of Troy: From Homer to Hollywood (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009)
• Shakespeare’s Names (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007)
• How to Do Things with Shakespeare (ed.) (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007)
• Where There’s a Will There’s a Way (New York: Penguin, 2006; London: Nicholas Brealey, 2007)
• Studying Shakespeare: A Guide to the Plays (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004)
• Shakespearean Suspect Texts: the “Bad Quartos” and their Contexts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)