Simon Palfrey.
Author
Simon Palfrey is a critic, teacher, novelist, filmmaker and curator. He grew up in Tasmania, left Australia on a Rhodes Scholarship, and is now Professor of English Literature at Brasenose College Oxford. Described by Julia Lupton as one of “the great Shakespeare scholars of our age”, his books include Doing Shakespeare (Arden, 2004; 2nd ed. 2011), a TLS International Book of the Year; Shakespeare in Parts (Oxford, 2007, with Tiffany Stern), the MRDS Book of the Year; Poor Tom: living King Lear (Chicago, 2014); Shakespeare’s Possible Worlds (Cambridge, 2014) and the novel “Macbeth, Macbeth” (Bloomsbury, 2016, revised ed. Boiler House 2021, with Ewan Fernie) praised as “a miracle, an instant classic” by Slavoj Zizek. His recent work on Spenser’s Faerie Queene explores the unique kinds of life generated by poetic forms, and the opportunities this opens up for more imaginative, adventurous, and politically engaged re-creations. Simon is also leader of the award-winning Demons Land project, a collaboration with First Nations’ artists that seeks to create a multi-voiced, multi-disciplinary epic of Australian country from both Indigenous and European perspectives. He is now writing Shakespeare’s History of the World.