Leslie Thomson

Professor of Emeritus of English; Graduate Faculty Member
Jackman Humanities Building, Room 905, 170 St. George Street, Toronto, ON M5R 2M8

Biography

Teaching and Research Interests:

Original staging of and stage directions in early modern drama; Staging of meaning; Modern editors’ treatment of original stage directions; Iconography and emblems, especially in relation to original staging.

BOOKS:

From Playtext to Performance on the Early Modern Stage: How did they do it?, Routledge, 2023; softcover 2024.

Discoveries on the Early Modern Stage: Contexts and Conventions, Cambridge University Press, 2018.

A Dictionary of Stage Directions in English Drama, 1580-1642, with co-author Alan C. Dessen. Cambridge University Press, 1999; softcover, 2001. 

Fortune: “All is but Fortune.” Exhibition catalogue. Washington, D.C.: Folger Shakespeare Library, 2000 (distributed by Washington University Press).

EDITIONS:

Thomas Middleton and John Webster. Anything for a Quiet Life. In Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works (pp. 1593-1631, 2015) and Thomas Middleton and Early Modern Textual Culture: A Companion to the Collected Works (pp. 422, 1160-65). Gen. eds. Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino. Oxford University Press, 2007.

William Shakespeare. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Ed. John Russell Brown, with Theatre Commentary by John Hirsch and Leslie Thomson. New York and London: Applause Books, 1996.

SELECTED ARTICLES:

“Women with Weapons on the Early Modern Stage.” Forthcoming in Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England, Vol. 38 (2025). 

Mucedorus: From Revision to Nostalgia.” Theatre Notebook 71 (2017): 140–160.

“Beds on the Early Modern Stage.” Early Theatre 19.2 (2016): 31-57.

“Dumb Shows in Performance on the Early Modern Stage.” Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England, Vol. 29 (2016): 17-45.

“Confinement and Freedom in The Tempest.” Shakespeare Survey 67 (2014): 384-95.

“Staging on the Road, 1586-1594: A New Look at Some Old Assumptions.” Shakespeare Quarterly 61 (2010): 526-50.

“Playgoers on the Outdoor Stages of Early Modern London.” Theatre Notebook 64 (2010): 3-11.

Pass over the stage—again.” Staging Shakespeare: Essays in Honor of Alan C. Dessen. Ed. Lena Cowen Orlin and Miranda Johnson Haddad. Delaware: U of Delaware P, 2007. Pp. 23-44.

“‘As proper a woman as any in Cheap’: Women in Shops on the Early Modern Stage.” Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England, Vol. 16 (2003): 145-61.

“Shakespeare and the Art of Making an Exit.” University of Toronto Quarterly 69 (2000): 540-59.

“The Meaning of Thunder and Lightning: Stage Directions and Audience Expectations.” Early Theatre 2 (1999): 11-24.

“A Quarto ‘Marked for Performance’:  Evidence of What?” Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England Vol. 8 (1996): 176-210. 

“‘Pray you, undo this button’: Implications of ‘Un-’ in King Lear.” Shakespeare Survey 45 (1993): 79-88.

WEB PUBLICATIONS:

As it hath been publiquely played”: The Stage Directions and Original Staging of The Three Ladies of London”. Performance as Research in Early English Theatre Studies: The Three Ladies of London in Context. (Initial paper and post-Conference Coda), 2014

Education

BA, University of Toronto
MA, University of Toronto
PhD, University of Toronto