Thursday 5th July, 5pm, Keynes SR15, University of Kent
We are very excited to announce Professor John Jowett’s visit to Kent, sponsored by Cultures of Performance.
Professor Jowett is one of the world’s leading textual scholars. He is a General Editor of The New Oxford Shakespeare (2016-17), an Associate General Editor of The Collected Works of Thomas Middleton (2007), and a General Editor of the Arden Early Modern Drama series. He has edited Richard III and Timon of Athens for the Oxford World’s Classics series, and Sir Thomas More for the Arden Shakespeare series. He has worked at the Shakespeare Institute since 1993, and currently acts as Deputy Director for the centre.
Professor Jowett is currently developing a new research project on Sir Edward Dering’s 1623 manuscript adaptation of Shakespeare’s Henry IV plays and his lecture at the University of Kent comes out of this research. Sir Edward Dering, from nearby Pluckley in Kent, is the earliest recorded purchaser of Shakespeare’s First Folio (1623). Around the same period, Dering combined Parts I and II of Shakespeare’s Henry IV into a single play version in preparation for an amateur performance in his household. The manuscript of this redacted version survives and Professor Jowett will be speaking about how and when this version of the play came to be performed. We look forward to hearing more about this local, remarkable performance culture and hope you can join us.
The lecture is free and open to all.