News

NVS cover story in Texas A&M English Department newsletter

The New Variorum Shakespeare is thrilled to be the cover story of this month's instalment of 'The English Aggie', the Texas A&M English Department's newsletter which is written and designed by undergraduate students. The newsletter features more details about the history, present, and future of the NVS, profiles of its staff, and information about how undergraduate students can get involved in the project. A copy of the newsletter can be found here: https://artsci.tamu.edu/english/academics/undergraduate/opportunities/revised-2-september-edition-of-english-aggie-2.pdf#September 2025

Our thanks to Maia Kumar for featuring us in this issue.

In Memoriam: Prof. Jay Halio and Prof. Susan May

The New Variorum Shakespeare is sad to report the recent deaths of two of its editors, Prof. Jay Halio (1928-2025) and Prof. Susan May (1935-2025).

Prof. Jay Halio was Professor Emeritus at the University of Delaware and editor of the New Variorum Shakespeare All's Well That Ends Well. His other editorial labor included old-spelling editions of King Lear and Macbeth as well as of Ben Jonson's Volpone, an edition of the first quarto of King Lear and several Shakespeare single-volume editions for Oxford University Press. His monographs include Understanding Shakespeare's Plays in Performance (1988) and Shakespeare In Performance: A Midsummer Night's Dream (1994).

Our General Editor Prof. Paul Werstine writes: "Jay Halio worked for several decades toward a New Variorum edition of All's Well That Ends Well. He collated nearly seventy major editions of the play from the last four centuries and recorded their variants in textual notes. His work on criticism of the play was particularly valuable. And he was able to attract to the edition John Quintus, who provided the section on the play's characters to Jay's extensive appendix on the criticism." The NVS All's Well That Ends Well is approaching completion under the editorship of Mark Netzloff, Lois Potter, and the aforementioned John Quintus (all of whom have been closely associated with Prof. Halio and the University of Delaware).

Prof. Susan May was Professor Emeritus at Longwood College. Over the course of fifty years, and inspired by her University of Pennsylvania doctoral thesis on 'A History of the Criticism of A Midsummer Night's Dream', she compiled the appendix on criticism of A Midsummer Night's Dream for the New Variorum Shakespeare edition of that play, which was published online in recent years. We are heartened that Prof. May lived to see her life's work published, and we will be celebrating the publication with a major international conference at Texas A&M University next year. An article about Prof. May's lifelong work on the Variorum can be found here: https://www.longwood.edu/news/2024/a-twice-told-tale/

Our General Editor Prof. Paul Werstine writes: "Susan May showed truly remarkable dedication to the New Variorum Shakespeare edition of A Midsummer Night's Dream. For her entire scholarly and professional career she laboured to compile the exhaustive appendix on criticism now published on the NVS site. Once her work had been put up, she also tirelessly checked it for accuracy."

We mourn the deaths of Prof. Halio and Prof. May and recognise their extraordinary service to the New Variorum Shakespeare. Our editions of All's Well That Ends Well and A Midsummer Night's Dream will stand as testament to their scholarly work for many decades to come.

NVS Seminar: Dr. Whitney Sperrazza book launch, 11 September 2025

The NVS is delighted to be co-hosting a book launch for Dr. Whitney Sperrazza's Anatomical Forms: The Science of the Body in Early Modern Women's Poetry (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025). Dr. Sperrazza is Assistant Professor of English at Texas A&M and will be in conversation with two other English Department colleagues, Dr. Kevin O'Sullivan and Dr. Katie Adkison. 

This NVS Seminar will take place at 12:30 Central Time in LAAH 453 at Texas A&M University and will also be streamed live on Zoom using the link below:

https://tamu.zoom.us/j/93140643094?pwd=KxSIiDb3SddO1982qiD2e6yxJMPpzb.1

(Zoom passcode, if needed: 895771)

We very much hope to see you there. Please direct any questions about the event to rstagg@tamu.edu

New Variorum Shakespeare announces event schedule for Fall Semester 2025

The New Variorum Shakespeare has announced its schedule of events for the forthcoming Fall Semester.

Our program begins in September with a book launch of Dr. Whitney Sperrazza's Anatomical Forms: The Science of the Body in Early Modern Women's Poetry (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025). Dr. Sperrazza is an Assistant Professor of English at Texas A&M. For this in-person event, which will also be streamed live on Zoom, Dr. Sperrazza will be in conversation with two other Texas A&M English Department colleagues, Dr. Kevin O'Sullivan and Dr. Katie Adkison. A catered reception will follow.

In October the NVS will be hosting a tea reception at the Shakespeare Society of Japan conference in Tokyo. Our Director Dr. Robert Stagg, who will also be giving a plenary lecture at the conference, will talk to delegates about the New Variorum Shakespeare and how it might be incorporated into their research and teaching.

In November our NVS Seminars resume with a talk by one of our General Editors, Prof. Eric Rasmussen (Foundation Professor of English at the University of Nevada, Reno). Prof. Rasmussen is one of the world's leading Shakespeareans: as well as being a widely-published expert on the Shakespeare First Folio, he is the co-editor of the RSC's Complete Works of William Shakespeare and The Norton Anthology of Renaissance Drama. This in-person event will also be streamed live on Zoom.

Our term card concludes in December with an exhibition at Texas A&M's Cushing Library about 'Shakespeare and his Europe', which will situate the library's nationally significant collection of Shakespearan texts alongside early modern European books (including its world-class collection of Cervantes and early modern Spanish drama). Faculty members and graduate students at Texas A&M will be treated to a 'private view' of the exhibition followed by a drinks reception in celebration of the NVS and the end of the Fall Semester.

More details of dates, times, etc, will be forthcoming. We hope to see you at many events in our Fall program.

NVS TEI to be preserved by Texas A&M University

Thanks to the efforts of our NVS Board Member and Texas A&M professor Laura Mandell, the TEI for the New Variorum Shakespeare will now be preserved by the Texas A&M College of Arts and Sciences. This arrangement will enable 10TB of permanent, open-access data storage to be used for the NVS, alongside other digital humanities projects, preserving the work of our editors in a form that will be available to all users regardless of any software or databases that might become obsolete. We are grateful to Prof. Mandell and the College of Arts and Sciences for ensuring that the NVS will remain legible and usable for decades to come.

NVS welcomes three undergraduate student assistants for Fall Semester 2025

The New Variorum Shakespeare is very happy to have received support for three undergraduate assistants to join the project in Fall 2025. Thanks to the Texas A&M Undergraduate Professional and Research Experience Program and the Texas A&M English Department's Undergraduate Office, we will be welcoming Adrian Wolinski, Andrew Molina and Jennifer Jacobson to work on the NVS in the Fall Semester 2025. Our graduate student assistant Lindsey Jones continues to work with us over the coming months. As our new undergraduate students arrive, we thank our outgoing undergraduate assistants Alexandra Blue and Grace Hoelscher and our outgoing graduate assistant Inhoo Kim.

Dr. Kris May wins David C. Greetham Prize

NVS Associate Digital Editor Dr. Kris May is co-winner of the David C. Greetham Prize 2023-4, awarded by the Society for Textual Scholarship. Dr. May was awarded the prize alongside two former Texas A&M professors Laura Estill and Heidi Craig (the latter of whom serves on the NVS Board) for their article 'A Rationale of Trans-inclusive Bibliography' published in 'Textual Cultures' (16.2, 2023). The Greetham Prize honors the authors of the best article published in the Society for Textual Scholarship's journal during a two-year cycle. Everyone at the NVS congratulates Dr. May on this prestigious award.