Evelyn Wrench Lecture – Dr. Catherine Loomis – “Teenage Shakespeare”

Teenagers forced to read Romeo and Juliet may believe they have a good idea of what teenage life was like in Shakespeare’s time—mean parents, hopeless romance, sword fighting, and dancing. But what was life really like for Shakespeare and his peers as they grew up? As a teen, Shakespeare may have gone to grammar school, may have worked as an apprentice, and may have appeared in plays, but he certainly suffered the loss of a sibling, a family financial crisis, and the negotiation of an irregular marriage.

This talk looks at the lives of teenagers in Shakespeare’s time, at Shakespeare’s own teenage years, and at the use Shakespeare makes of teenagers in his plays.

Dr. Catherine Loomis has taught at the University of New Orleans and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and currently teaches at the Rochester Institute of Technology. She is the author of The Death of Elizabeth I: Remembering and Reconstructing the Virgin Queen (2010) and the editor of William Shakespeare: A Documentary Volume (2005) and Shaping Shakespeare for Performance: The Bear Stage (2015) as well as essays on Shakespeare, Queen Elizabeth, and theater history.  She has lectured on Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth at the Folger Institute in Washington, DC, and at several universities. She is currently working on a collection of early modern poems and prose works in which male authors adopt a female narrative voice.