Dr Sean McEvoy, Murray Edwards

spm33@cam.ac.uk

 

 

Biographical Information

I am a Fellow at Murray Edwards, where I teach early modern drama and tragedy.  I was an undergraduate at Christ's, did my MA at Sussex and my PhD at Royal Holloway. For very many years I taught sixth-form English, Classical Civilisation and Theatre Studies in Brighton. I'm a Fellow of the English Association.

Research Interests

  • Early modern drama, with a particular interest in theatricality
  • Contemporary mainstream British and Irish theatre
  • History and theory of tragedy
  • Materialist criticism

Areas of Graduate Supervision

None at present.

Selected Publications

Books 

  • Shakespeare: the Basics (London: Routledge, 2000; second edition, 2006; third edition 2012; fourth edition 2024); Korean edition (Seoul: Jageunsaram, 2015); Spanish edition (Mexico City: Editorial Trillas, 2015)
  • William Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’: A Sourcebook (London: Routledge, 2005)
  • Ben Jonson: Renaissance Dramatist (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008)
  • Tragedy: A Student Handbook (London: English and Media Centre 2009)
  • Theatrical Unrest: ten riots in the history of the stage, 1601-2004. (London: Routledge, 2016). Shortlisted for the Theatre Book Prize 2017.
  • Tragedy: the Basics (London: Routledge, 2017)
  • Class, Culture and Tragedy in the Plays of Jez Butterworth (London: Palgrave 2021)

 

 

Articles and Chapters

  • ‘The Politics of Teaching Shakespeare’, English in Education (25), Autumn 1991
  • ‘Shakespeare Teaching at 16-19’ in Shakespeare in Education, ed. Martin Blocksidge (London and New York: Continuum, 2003)
  • ‘Hieronimo’s Old Cloak: Theatricality and Representation in Ben Jonson’s Middle Comedies’, The Ben Jonson Journal (11) 2004
  • ‘A Level English Literature at Varndean College’, The Use of English (55/3), 2004
  • ‘Ben Jonson’ for the Cambridge World Shakespeare Encyclopedia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016)
  • ‘No Craft More Privileged’, in Mike Hayler and Jess Moriarty (eds), Self-Narrative and Pedagogy (Sense: Rotterdam, 2017)
  • ‘The Ethics of Teaching Tragic Narratives’ in Richard Jacobs (ed.), Teaching Narrative (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2018)
  • 'Shakespeare's Radical Presence: Current Theorizing of the Plays as Expressive of Social Justice', in Pamela Bickley and Jenny Stevens (eds) Shakespeare, Education and Pedagogy (London: Routledge, 2023).