5XÉçÇøÊÓƵ

Duncan Fraser
Visitor (English)

Research

Summary of doctoral research:

My thesis was a critical edition of Lording Barry’s play Ram Alley (first published in 1611 by Robert Wilson and printed by George Eld).

The edition consists of an annotated, modernised spelling version of the text based on a bibliographic study of the first quarto, and an introduction which covers, inter alia:

• the printing of the first quarto (in particular the working practices of the printer, George Eld, who was also responsible for the first quarto of Troilus and Cressida and Shakespeare’s Sonnets)
• the life of Lording Barry and his critical reception
• the play’s place in and contribution to early Jacobean city comedy, specifically in relation to the use of bawdy wit in masculine self-definition
• the problems of annotating early modern innuendo-based humour for a modern reader.

Post-doctoral research:

With Andrew Hadfield, an edition of the letters of Edmund Spencer, the great-great-grandson of the poet Edmund Spenser, published as Gentry Life in Georgian Ireland: The Letters of Edmund Spencer (1711-1790), Legenda (2017).

Also with Andrew Hadfield, an edition of The Politician by James Shirley, to be published in the forthcoming Complete Works of James Shirley, Oxford 5XÉçÇøÊÓƵ Press.

Current activity:

My main current research interest is the comedic theatre of early modern London and its role in the social and economic life of the city.