Professor Simon Palfrey

Professor of English Literature; Tutorial Fellow, Brasenose College
simon.palfrey@ell.ox.ac.uk

Shakespeare (language, writing in parts, actors, metaphysics, politics), Spenser, Renaissance drama; dramatic phenomenology; Kierkegaard; literary-critical creativity; Romantic poetry. My recent work explores the unique kinds of life generated by dramatic, poetic, and fictional forms, and the opportunities this opens up for more philosophically adventurous and formally imaginative criticism. Current projects include a critical fiction, Macbeth, Macbeth (Bloomsbury, 2016, written with Ewan Fernie), Demons Land: a poem come true, a collaborative multi-media exhibition and book inspired by Spenser's Faerie Queene, and a semi-autobiographical exploration of romantic poetry, The Mental Travellers. I am also the curator (with Emma Smith) of the major 2016 Bodleian Library exhibition, Shakespeare's Dead. 

I tutor undergraduates in the period courses from 1550-1830 (plus Shakespeare); teach the MSt course *Life in Shakespeare and Spenser*; and various M.Litt and D.Phil students in areas where I have research expertise.

Watch the video trailer for Macbeth, Macbeth.

 

College Website

Publications

  • Macbeth, Macbeth (Beyond Criticism)

    2016
    |
    Book
    The tragedy is done, the tyrant Macbeth dead. The time is free. But for how long? As Macduff pursues dreams of national revival, smaller lives are seeding. In the ruins of Dunsinane, the Porter tries to keep his three young boys safe from the nightmare of history. In a nunnery deep in Birnam Wood, a girl attempts to forget what she lost in war. Flitting between them, a tortured clairvoyant shakes with the knowledge of what's to come. An unprecedented collaboration between two leading Shakespeareans, Macbeth, Macbeth sparks a whole new world from the embers of Shakespeare's great tragedy.

  • Shakespeare's Dead

    2016
    |
    Book
    Pyramus: `Now die, die, die, die, die.' [Dies] A Midsummer Night's Dream 'Shakespeare's Dead' reveals the unique ways in which Shakespeare brings dying, death, and the dead to life. It establishes the cultural, religious and social contexts for thinking about early modern death, with particular reference to the plague which ravaged Britain during his lifetime, and against the divisive background of the Reformation. But it also shows how death on stage is different from death in real life. The dead come to life, ghosts haunt the living, and scenes of mourning are subverted by the fact that the supposed corpse still breathes. Shakespeare scripts his scenes of dying with extraordinary care. Famous final speeches - like Hamlet's `The rest is silence', Mercutio's `A plague o' both your houses', or Richard III's `My kingdom for a horse' - are also giving crucial choices to the actors as to exactly how and when to die. Instead of the blank finality of death, we get a unique entrance into the loneliness or confusion of dying. 'Shakespeare's Dead' tells of death-haunted heroes such as Macbeth and Hamlet, and death-teasing heroines like Juliet, Ophelia, and Cleopatra. It explores the fear of `something after death', and characters' terrifying visions of being dead. But it also uncovers the constant presence of death in Shakespeare's comedies, and how the grinning jester might be a leering skull in disguise. This book celebrates the paradox: the life in death in Shakespeare.

  • Poor Tom: living King Lear

    2014
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    Book
    One of the most memorable and affecting Shakespearean characters is Edgar in King Lear. He has long been celebrated for his faithfulness in the face of his father's rejection, and the scene in which he saves his blinded father from suicide is regarded as one of the most moving in all of Shakespeare. In Poor Tom, Simon Palfrey asks us to rethink all those received ideas - and thus to experience King Lear as never before. He argues that Edgar is Shakespeare's most radical experiment in characterization - and also his most exhaustive model of both human and theatrical possibility. The key to the Edgar character is that he spends most of the play disguised, much of it as "Poor Tom of Bedlam," and his disguises come to uncanny life. The Edgar-role is always more than one person; it animates multitudes, past and present and future, and gives life to states of being beyond the normal reach of the senses-undead, or not-yet, or ghostly, or possible rather than actual. And because the Edgar - role both connects and retunes all of the figures and scenes in the play, a close attention to this particular part can shine new light on how the whole play works. The ultimate message of Palfrey's bravura analysis is the same for readers or actors or audiences as it is for the characters in the play: see and listen feelingly; pay attention, especially when it seems as though there is nothing there.
    DRAMA

  • Shakespeare's Possible Worlds

    2014
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    Book
    New methods are needed to do justice to Shakespeare. His work exceeds conventional models, past and present, for understanding playworlds. In this book, Simon Palfrey goes right to the heart of early modern popular drama, revealing both how it works and why it matters. Unlike his contemporaries, Shakespeare gives independent life to all his instruments, and to every fraction and fragment of the plays. Palfrey terms these particles 'formactions' - theatre-specific forms that move with their own action and passion. Palfrey's book is critically daring in both substance and format. Its unique mix of imaginative gusto, thought experiments, and virtuosic technique generates piercing close readings of the plays. There is far more to playlife than meets the eye. Influenced by Leibniz's visionary original model of possible worlds, Palfrey opens up the multiple worlds of Shakespeare's language, scenes, and characters as never before.

  • Attending to Tom

    2014
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    Journal article
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    Shakespeare Quarterly
    • More