News

NVS to host two-day international conference on 'Dream' and 'Tale'

The New Variorum Shakespeare is excited to announce that we will be hosting a two-day international conference about the two plays we have recently published in variorum format online, A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Winter's Tale. This conference will bring together scholars from around the world for open discussion of the two plays in their various aspects. Taking place at Texas A&M University on 10-11 February 2026, the event will also be livestreamed and recorded on Zoom.

Speakers from outside Texas A&M will include: Roberta Barker (Dalhousie), Katherine Steele Brokaw (UT Austin), Urvashi Chakravarty (Toronto), Jessica Chiba (Shakespeare Institute), Mario DiGangi (CUNY), Ruben Espinosa (ASU), Peter Holland (Notre Dame), Sujata Iyengar (Georgia), Peter Kirwan (MBU), Rory Loughnane (Kent), Gordon McMullan (KCL), David Nicol (Dalhousie), Lena Orlin (Georgetown), Eric Rasmussen (Nevada), Melissa Sanchez (UPenn), Goran Stanivukovic (SMU), Tiffany Stern (Shakespeare Institute), Valerie Traub (Michigan), and Paul Werstine (UWO).

Full details, including a Zoom link and a schedule, will be coming soon.

NVS Seminar: Prof. Steven Urkowitz, 4 December 2025

Our final NVS Seminar of the Fall Semester 2025 was given by Prof. Steven Urkowitz (CUNY) in conversation with our General Editor Prof. Eric Rasmussen on Thursday 4 December 2025.

Prof. Steven Urkowitz is Professor Emeritus of English and Theater at the City College of New York (CUNY). Most notably for this NVS Seminar, he is the author of Shakespeare's Revision of King Lear (Princeton University Press, 1980). He has been a trustee of the Shakespeare Association of America and the American Shakespeare Center, and has directed and dramaturged around the world.

The New Variorum Shakespeare took the occasion of Prof. Urkowitz's NVS Seminar to announce that we will publish the digital variorum text of King Lear in the first few months of 2026. A further announcement will take place when the edition is available on our website.

A recording of Prof. Urkowitz's NVS Seminar is available here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VqmTZa7iHDKtD_5-dKTjxvpB8xf7jYzs/view?usp=sharing

NVS Seminar: Prof. Eric Rasmussen, 18 November 2025

Our November NVS Seminar was given by Prof. Eric Rasmussen under the title 'The Fifth Folio: Shakespeare Without Rules' on 18 November 2025 at 1pm (Central Time).

Prof. Rasmussen is one of the two General Editors of the NVS and one of the editors of the NVS 'Hamlet'. He is Foundation Professor Emeritus of the University of Nevada, Reno, where he also served as Chair of the English Department. Prof. Rasmussen is one of the world's leading experts on the First Folio and his work to authenticate copies has led to him being described as "the Robert Langdon of the Shakespeare world" by 'The Washington Post'. He is the author of 'The Shakespeare Thefts: In Search of the First Folio' (2011) and he is the co-editor of the Royal Shakespeare Company's 'Complete Works', of the definitive catalogue of Shakespeare First Folios, and of 'The Norton Anthology of English Renaissance Drama' (2002). His editorial work extends to editions for Oxford World's Classics, the Arden Shakespeare, the Revels Plays, and the Malone Society. Both his research and his teaching have received numerous distinguished awards.

A recording of Prof. Rasmussen's NVS Seminar can now be found here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1veJXOFW9T71UjLRmDpiSvXb31gLuq8Ly/view

NVS at Shakespeare Society of Japan conference

The New Variorum Shakespeare hosted a tea reception at the Shakespeare Society of Japan's annual conference in Tokyo on Sunday 12 October. Our Director Dr. Robert Stagg was present to talk to SSJ delegates about how the NVS can be used in their teaching and scholarship, and the newly digital format of the variorum was warmly received by all. Thanks are due to the Texas A&M English Department for funding the reception, which further enhances the NVS's global reach.

More information about the Shakespeare Society of Japan can be found on their website, here: https://en.s-sj.org/page/about

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 was delighted to co-host 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 was in conversation with two other English Department colleagues, Dr. Kevin O'Sullivan and Dr. Katie Adkison. 

The recording of the NVS Seminar can now be found here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KzDbj8bQ0_I9PItrcjR7dgyltOnNKlQI/view

Many congratulations to Dr. Sperrazza on her excellent new book.