David Bevington

David Bevington was born to Merle M. (1900–1964) and Helen Bevington (née Smith; 1906–2001), and grew up in Manhattan, and from age eleven, North Carolina, when his parents, themselves both academics, finished graduate school at Columbia University and went on to join the faculty at Duke.

David Martin Bevington (May 13, 1931 – August 2, 2019) was an American literary scholar.

After attending Phillips Exeter Academy from 1945 to 1948, before it was co-educational, he graduated from Harvard University cum laude in 1952, before entering the navy that year, and becoming a lieutenant junior grade before his leaving in 1955.

He saw much of the Mediterranean, though neither Israel nor Turkey.

Upon his return to Harvard, he pursued an M.A. and Ph.D., receiving them respectively in 1957 and 1959.

Surprisingly, he was well into the graduate process before settling on the Renaissance; he had intended to study the Victorian until a Shakespeare seminar convinced him otherwise.

During the doctoral process, he was a teaching fellow at Harvard.

When he was granted the final degree, his title changed to instructor.

He held this post until 1961, when he became assistant professor of english at the University of Virginia; he then became associate professor in 1964, and professor in 1966.

In 1963, he served as visiting professor at New York University's summer school; he filled that capacity at Harvard's summer school in 1967, at the University of Hawaii in 1970, and at Northwestern University in 1974.

He has had two Guggenheim fellowships, first in 1964–65, and again in 1981–82.

He was the Phyllis Fay Horton Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in the Humanities and in English Language & Literature, Comparative Literature, and the college at the University of Chicago, where he taught since 1967, as well as chair of Theatre and Performance Studies.

"One of the most learned and devoted of Shakespeareans," so called by Harold Bloom, he specialized in British drama of the Renaissance, and edited and introduced the complete works of William Shakespeare in both the 29-volume, Bantam Classics paperback editions and the single-volume Longman edition.

After accomplishing this feat, Bevington was often cited as the only living scholar to have personally edited Shakespeare's complete corpus.

He also edited the Norton Anthology of Renaissance Drama and an important anthology of Medieval English Drama, the latter of which was just re-released by Hackett for the first time in nearly four decades.

Bevington's editorial scholarship is so extensive that Richard Strier, an early modern colleague at the University of Chicago, was moved to comment: "Every time I turn around, he has edited a new Renaissance text. Bevington has endless energy for editorial projects."

In addition to his work as an editor, he published studies of Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, and the Stuart Court Masque, among others, though it is for his work as an editor that he is primarily known.

Despite formally retiring, Bevington continued to teach and publish.

In 1967, he was a visiting professor at the University of Chicago for a year, and joined the faculty as professor in 1968.

He was a senior fellow at the Southeastern Institute of Medieval and Renaissance Studies during the summer of 1975.

Bevington served as senior consultant and seminar leader at the Folger Institute in Renaissance and 18th-century Studies from 1976 to 1977 and 1987–88.

In addition to his preeminence among scholars of William Shakespeare, he was a much beloved teacher, winning a Quantrell Award in 1979.

In 1979, Bevington was honored with the Llewellyn John and Harriet Manchester Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching.

The Quantrell Award, for which students of the college nominate their instructors, is considered among the highest accolades the University of Chicago confers, and the most treasured by the faculty.

In 1985 he was appointed to the Phyllis Fay Horton distinguished service professorship in the humanities, a post he held continuously thereafter.

He was appointed the 2006-2007 Lund-Gill Chair in Rosary College of Arts and Sciences at Dominican University in River Forest, Illinois.

Consistently, Bevington was the instructor of a two-part History and Theory of Drama sequence.

This course was co-taught with actor/translator Nicholas Rudall, dramaturg Drew Dir, director of undergraduate studies in theater and performance studies Heidi Coleman, and actor David New.

It is now taught by Professor John Muse, a transition which first occurred when Bevington chose to decrease his teaching hours and focus on Shakespeare-centric classes.

The first quarter of this course spans drama from Greek drama to the Renaissance.

The second quarter begins with Ibsen's A Doll's House and ends with the postmodern, including Beckett's Endgame and the work of Pinter and Caryl Churchill.

For midterms and finals, students either write a paper critically analyzing a play, or else perform scenes from plays relevant to the course (though not necessarily those read in class).

Bevington required, from those opting to perform, a reflection paper analyzing the challenges of staging the scene.

Bevington also taught courses entitled "Shakespeare: Histories and Comedies," surveying such plays as Richard II, Richard III, Henry IV, Part 1, Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Twelfth Night, and Measure for Measure; "Shakespeare: Tragedies and Romances"; and "Shakespeare's History Plays"; among others.

When Bevington was not instructing these courses, they were often led by his fellow professors Richard Strier, John Muse, or Tim Harrison.

Bevington usually spent Spring Quarter with B.A. theses he advised, and the corresponding students, or else traveled.

However, he was also known to sign up for introductory-level courses in subjects vastly different from his own (such as Greek, or the Natural Sciences).

When possible, Bevington opted to teach class in the large Edward M. Sills Seminar Room, which features a large, oval table accommodating several dozen, rather than in a more traditional classroom in which all the students might face a lectern.

He felt this format fosters greater participation and discussion among students, and went out of his way to encourage the sharing of ideas and opinions.

Most recently he authored Shakespeare and Biography, a study of the history of Shakespearean biography and of such biographers, as well as Murder Most Foul: Hamlet Through the Ages. In August, 2012, after a decade of research, he released the first complete edition of Ben Jonson published in over a half-century with Ian Donaldson and Martin Butler from the Cambridge Press.