Profile

Biography

Richard Rowland joined the department in 2001, after teaching for more than a decade at the University of Oxford.

He has edited plays by Marlowe (for the Oxford University Press Complete Works), by Chapman and Jonson (for Penguin), and he has edited the two-part Elizabethan history play Edward IV for the Revels series. He has published several articles on the playwright Thomas Heywood, and has recently completed a monograph, Thomas Heywood’s Theatre, 1599-1639: Locations, Translations and Conflict (Ashgate, 2010).

He also works on the reception and reinvention of ancient drama: he has published on Tony Harrison’s adaptations of Greek and medieval texts, and is currently working on a cultural history of the Trachiniae of Sophocles, from ancient Greece and Rome through to the War on Terror.

Research

Overview

Richard Rowland researches the relationship between text and performance in a wide range of areas. He has edited more than a dozen early modern plays, but is equally interested in the translation and reinvention of the drama of antiquity.

He has recently completed a monograph on the theatre of Thomas Heywood, but has also produced a new translation of The Women of Trachis of Sophocles, a collaborative project with a PhD student from the Department of Music, which led to a production (with full gamelan ensemble) in York’s medieval Guildhall in 2010.

Current projects

He is currently writing a monograph on the reception and cultural history of the Sophocles play, from ancient Greece and Rome, through Handelian oratorio, through to Martin Crimp’s Cruel and Tender, a play about the War on Terror from 2004.

Supervision

Richard Rowland welcomes potential postgraduates who wish to work on the drama of the ancient, medieval or early modern periods, and especially those who are interested in how these texts might be edited and/or recreated for performance in the future.

Publications

Selected publications

Books

• Thomas Heywood’s Theatre, 1599-1639: Locations, Translations and Conflict (Ashgate, 2010)
• (ed.) Heywood's Edward IV for the Revels series (Manchester University Press, 2005)
• (co-ed.) volumes of plays by George Chapman and Ben Jonson for the Penguin Dramatists series (1998)
• (ed.) Marlowe's Edward II for the Oxford University Press Complete Works (1994)

Essays

• "Thou teachest me humanitie': Thomas Heywood's The English Traveller', in M. Cordner, P. Holland & J. Kerrigan (eds), English Comedy (Cambridge, 1994)
• 'The Captives: Thomas Heywood's 'Whole Monopoly of Mischeiff", Modern Language Review 90:3 (1995)
• "Speaking some words but of no importance'? Stage Directions, Thomas Heywood and Edward IV', Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England 18 (2005)
• 'Two Plays in One: Annotations in the Third Quarto of Edward IV', TEXT 17 (2005)
• Introduction to Thomas Middleton & William Rowley, A New Way to Please You (or The Old Law), RSC/Nick Hern, 2005
• 'Scrubbing up Nice? Tony Harrison’s Stagings of the Past', in M. Luckhurst (ed.), A Companion to Modern British and Irish Drama (Oxford, 2006)