Robert Stagg
  • Assistant Professor
  • Director, New Variorum Shakespeare

Biography

Dr. Robert Stagg is Assistant Professor of English and Director of the New Variorum Shakespeare at Texas A&M University. He joined Texas A&M from previous posts at the Shakespeare Institute and the University of Oxford in summer 2024.

He is the author of Shakespeare’s Blank Verse: An Alternative History (Oxford University Press, 2022) which was shortlisted for the Society for Renaissance Studies Book Prize and the University English Book Prize. The initial research for the book also received the University of Oxford's longstanding Charles Oldham Shakespeare Prize. He is currently in the final stages of writing a book titled Shakespeare’s Worldly Style which considers how Shakespeare’s literary-dramatic style was informed by the world outside Europe, from North African lyric to early American writing to Japanese drama. An article written en route to this book was recently named runner-up for the Shakespeare Association of America’s Innovative Article Award.

Dr. Stagg has articles published or forthcoming on a wide range of subjects in the journals Shakespeare Quarterly, Shakespeare Survey, Studies in Philology, The Review of English Studies, Essays in Criticism, and Shakespeare, as well as chapters in many edited collections. He is also the editor of a special issue of Shakespeare about 'Shakespeare and Versification', and co-author of the Oxford Bibliographies entry on 'Shakespeare's Language'. Dr. Stagg has received major long-term research funding from the Leverhulme Trust and the Wolfson Foundation, as well as short-term research fellowships in libraries and institutions ranging from New York to Verona to Tokyo. He has given plenary and invited lectures around the world, and his “outstanding contributions to the field of the Renaissance” were recognized in the London Renaissance Seminar’s inaugural Contribution Awards.

Dr. Stagg is also closely involved with many of the world’s leading Shakespeare editions. He is Director of the New Variorum Shakespeare, the oldest continuously operating editorial project in Shakespeare studies (now published in a pioneering digital format). He is Consulting Editor for the bestselling Folger Shakespeare Editions, and recently served as one of the first three Arden Fellows on the advisory and editorial board of the Arden Shakespeare Fourth Series.

For the latest information about the New Variorum Shakespeare, including its schedule of events, please see: https://newvariorumshakespeare.org/news/

 

Educational Background

  • PhD, Soton / London
  • MSt Oxford
  • BA Cambridge

Awards & Honors

  • Runner-up, Shakespeare Association of America Innovative Article Award. For 'Shakespeare's Arabic Sonnets', Shakespeare Survey, 2024.
  • Shortlisted, Society for Renaissance Studies Book Prize. For best book in any field of Renaissance studies published in 2022 or 2023.
  • Shortlisted, University English Book Prize. For best first book in any aspect of English-language literary criticism by a UK-based scholar.
  • Honorable Mention, London Renaissance Seminar Contribution Awards. For “outstanding contributions to the field of the Renaissance”.
  • Charles Oldham Shakespeare Prize, University of Oxford. For best postgraduate work (masters or doctoral) on a Shakespearean subject.

Selected Publications

  • Books:

    Shakespeare’s Blank Verse: An Alternative History (Oxford University Press, 2022).

    Shortlisted for the Society for Renaissance Studies Book Prize and the University English Book Prize.

  • Edited Collections:

    ‘Shakespeare and Versification’. Special issue of Shakespeare, 2022.

  • Articles:

    • (with Brandi K. Adams, Urvashi Chakravarty, Katherine Schaap Williams) 'Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Critical Futures', Shakespeare Quarterly, 2026.
    • ‘Shakespeare’s Arabic Sonnets’. Shakespeare Survey, 2024. Runner-up for the Shakespeare Association of America's Innovative Article Award.
    • (with Iolanda Plescia) 'Shakespeare's Language', Oxford Bibliographies, 2024.
    • 'Meter in the Middle Distance', Shakespeare Survey, 2023.
    • ‘Is Blank Verse Black?’. Shakespeare, 2022.
    • ‘Rhyme’s Voices: Hearing Gender in The Taming of the Shrew’. Studies in Philology, 2022
    • 'Afterword' to special issue of Skenè on 'Well-Staged Syllables: From Classical to Early Modern Meters on Stage', 2022.
    • ‘Shakespeare’s Bombastic Blanks’. The Review of English Studies, 2021
    • ‘Shakespeare’s Bewitching Line’. Shakespeare Survey, 2018.
    • ‘Wordsworth, Pope, and Writing After Bathos’. Essays in Criticism, 2014.

  • Chapters:

    • ‘Close Reading Drama’, Close Reading for the 21st Century, ed. Dan Sinykin and Johanna Winant. Princeton University Press, 2025.
    • ‘Foreword’ to Richard Barnfield’s Poetics: Early Modern English Poetry Beyond Shakespeare, ed. Fabio Ciambella, Camilla Caporicci and Cristiano Ragni. Bloomsbury, 2025.
    • ‘Prosody’, The Oxford Handbook of Sir Philip Sidney, ed. Catherine Bates. Oxford University Press, 2025.
    • ‘Humoral style’, Humorality in Early Modern Art, Material Culture, and Performance, ed. Kaara Peterson and Amy Kenny. Palgrave, 2021.
    • ‘Against “the music of poetry”’, The Edinburgh Companion to Literature and Music, ed. Delia da Sousa Correa. Edinburgh University Press, 2020.
    • ‘Reading the onstage road’, Reading the Road: Shakespeare’s Crossways to Bunyan’s Highways, ed. Lisa Hopkins and William Angus. Edinburgh University Press, 2019.

  • Appointments:

    • 2026 – present: Consulting Editor, Folger Shakespeare Editions
    • 2024 – present: Director, New Variorum Shakespeare
    • 2022 - 2025: Arden Shakespeare Fourth Series Fellow
    • 2023 – 2024: Academic Deputy, Everything to Everybody Shakespeare, University of Birmingham / Library of Birmingham
    • 2020 - 2024: Leverhulme Early-Career Research Fellow, Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon
    • 2017 - present: Senior Member / Associate Senior Member, St Anne's College, Oxford (also, variously, Pro-Proctor, Assistant Dean, and Lecturer [Asst Prof] in English)

  • Research Funding and Visiting Fellowships:

    • 2024: Visiting Fellow, University of Verona
    • 2023: Visiting Fellow, Waseda University. Part-funded by a grant from the Sasakawa Foundation.
    • 2020 - 2024: Leverhulme Trust Early-Career Research Fellowship
    • 2020: Visiting Fellow, 'Berlin Sessions', in collaboration with Humboldt University
    • 2019: Pforzheimer Visiting Research Fellow, Harry Ransom Center, UT Austin
    • 2017: Wolfson Visiting Research Fellow, New York Public Library
    • 2017: Tom Jarman Visiting Scholar, Gladstone's Library
    • 2015: London Film School grant to write and produce documentary on 'Shoreditch: Shakespeare's Hidden London'
    • 2013 - 2016: Wolfson Foundation Scholarship in the Humanities