David Roberts

Professor of English

School of English

Email:: david.roberts@bcu.ac.uk

David holds degrees from the Universities of Bristol and Oxford, where his doctorate was supervised by the great Shakespeare scholar, Emrys Jones. He then taught at both Bristol and Oxford before moving to Japan, where he taught at the Universities of Kyoto and Osaka, and for the British Council.

David was Head of English at Birmingham City University for ten years before becoming Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Dean of Arts, Design and Media. During a five-and-a-half year stint he oversaw numerous projects including the opening of the new Royal Birmingham Conservatoire and the expansion of the multi-award winning Birmingham School of Jewellery. He was elected to a Fellowship of the English Association in 2010 and in 2013 became a National Teaching Fellow. Alongside his current teaching and research duties he serves as University Orator, writing and delivering more than one hundred citations for honorary doctors ranging from Lord Heseltine to Sir Daniel Day-Lewis.

He has published five books (four editions and one monograph) with Oxford University Press, two monographs with Cambridge University Press, a monograph and an edition with Methuen, and an edition with The Society for Theatre Research. His work has appeared in leading journals including Shakespeare Quarterly, New Theatre Quarterly, The Review of English Studies, and The Times Literary Supplement. Recent articles include a study of ethics and theatrical biography, a philosophical critique of work on games and teaching in the humanities, and essays on Shakespeare, Beethoven and Wagner. He has also published textbooks on writing, careers and games which are widely used in universities and schools.

David is strongly committed to supporting the arts and is a Trustee of the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, Mid-Wales Opera, and the Birmingham Hippodrome. In his spare time he writes fiction and programme essays for theatres including the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.

Current Activity

Areas of Expertise

Qualifications

Memberships

Teaching

Research

Postgraduate Supervision

Publications

‘Living with Ghosts: Shakespeare, Beethoven and Wagner’, forthcoming in Mervyn Cooke and Christopher Wilson, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare in Music (OUP, 2021)

‘Shakespeare and Terrorism’, in Jonathan Harris, ed., Terrorism and Art (Routledge, 2020)

‘Colley Cibber and Winchester College’ (with Suzanne Foster), Notes and Queries, September 2020

Ed.,.William Congreve, The Way of the World (Methuen, 2020)

‘Beethoven and Shakespeare: Ghosts and Heroes’, The Cambridge Quarterly (June 2019)

Hippodrome 120 (Birmingham Hippodrome, 2019)

‘The Path to Woolf Works and the Language of Design: an Interview with Ravi Deepres’, New Theatre Quarterly (August 2019)

‘Annotating Defoe: the case of A Journal of the Plague Year’, Modern Language Review (September 2019)

George Farquhar: A Migrant Life Reversed (Methuen, 2018)

Games for English Literature (with Izabela Hopkins) (Libri, 2016)

‘Writing the Ethical Life: Theatrical Biography and the Case of Thomas Betterton’, in Claire Cochrane and Jo Robinson, eds., History and Historiography: Ethics, Evidence and Truth (Palgrave, 2016)

‘Shakespeare and the Jewellers’, The Cambridge Quarterly (June 2016)

‘First Night in Bristol: 250^th Anniversary Reflections’, New Theatre Quarterly (August 2016)

‘Chocolate Covered Broccoli? Games and the Teaching of English’ (with Izabela Hopkins), Changing English (May 2015)

‘Theatre Criticism’ and ‘Jeremy Collier’ in The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of British Literature, ed. Gary Day and Jack Lynch (Wiley-Blackwell, 2015 (Cambridge University Press, 2014)

Restoration Plays and Players (Cambridge University Press, 2014)

‘Hamlet on the English Stage, 1603-1709’, in Peter Marx, ed., Hamletbuch (Metzler, 2014)

Pinacotheca Bettertonaeana: The library of a seventeenth-century actor. (Society for Theatre Research, 2013)

‘Ranked among the best: Translation and Cultural Agency in Restoration Translations of French Drama’, Modern Language Review (June 2013)

‘Thomas Killigrew, Theatre Manager’, in Philip Major, ed., Thomas Killigrew and the Seventeenth-century English Stage: New Perspectives (Ashgate, 2013)

Thomas Betterton: The Greatest Actor of the Restoration Stage (Cambridge University Press, 2010)

Ed. (revised edition), Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year (Oxford University Press, 2010)

'Class and the Seventeenth-Century Actor,' Studies in Theatre and Performance (Summer 2010)

'"I think no ill one". A Letter from Thomas Betterton sheds new light on the Chandos Portrait', The Times Literary Supplement, 14 August 2009

'"Almost Impossible in Praise": Dedicatory Criticism in English Dramatic Texts, 1660-1700', 1650-1850: Critical Voices Special Issue (October 2008)

‘The 1695 Actors’ Rebellion: new light on old patentees’, Notes and Queries (December 2007)

‘Thomas Betterton, Private Tutor’, Notes and Queries (March 2007)

'Thomas Betterton, Bookseller's Apprentice', The Review of English Studies (November 2007)

‘Sleeping Beauties: Shakespeare, Sleep and the Stage’, The Cambridge Quarterly (September 2006)

'Sir Fopling in the Mall', Notes and Queries (September 2003)

'As rude as you like – honest: Theatre Criticism and the Law', New Theatre Quarterly (August 2003)

'Caesar's Gift: playing the park in the Seventeenth Century', ELH (June 2003)

'Shakespeare, Theater Criticism and the Acting Tradition', Shakespeare Quarterly (Fall 2002)

'Two Shakespearian Allusions and the Date of Marvell's "A Nymph Complaining the Death of her Faun"', Notes and Queries (September 2002)

'Henry VIII and The True Chronicle History of King Leir', Notes and Queries (September 2001)

'Ravishing Strides: signs of the peripatetic on the seventeenth-century stage', New Theatre Quarterly (February 2001)

‘Making the Words Count: Towards an Analytic Database of Theatre Reviews’, New Theatre Quarterly (February 1999)

‘Donne, Geography, and the Hymn to God my God in My Sicknesse’, Notes and Queries (June 1999)

‘Shakespeare’s Fellows: Names and Collocations’, Cahiers Elisabethains (January 1999)

Careers Using English (with Margaret Clewett), (Taylor & Francis, 1998)

The Student’s Guide to Writing Essays (Taylor & Francis, 1998)

‘Towards a Study of Theatre Journalism’ Studies in Theatre Production (December 1997)

‘The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie: An Afternoon at the Bunraku Theatre’, Studies in Theatre Production (March 1997)

‘Old Hamlet and the Archbishop: a new allusion in Hamlet?’ Notes and Queries (June 1996)

Ed., Lord Chesterfield’s Letters (Oxford University Press, 1992)

Ed., Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year (Oxford University Press, 1990)

Ed., Daniel Defoe, Colonel Jack (Oxford University Press, 1989)

The Ladies: Female Patronage of Restoration Drama (Oxford University Press, 1989)

Creative Writing includes two novels, The Life of Harris the Actor (2015) and Plague Year (2020), and short stories in the anthologies Pen and Ink (2013), Lifelines (2016), Timelines (2017), Journeys (2018), and Borderlands (2019).