Dr Martin Wiggins MA DPhil (Oxon)

• MA, DPhil (Oxon).

I studied at the University of Oxford in the 1980s, where I was awarded the Violet Vaughan-Morgan Prize, the Mason Lowance Prize, the Leonard Theberge Memorial Prize, and the Charles Oldham Shakespeare Prize, all for work in English Literature. I was a scholar, and later a graduate scholar, of Mansfield College, where I wrote my D.Phil. thesis on ‘The Assassin in English Renaissance Drama’. I was later elected to a Junior Research Fellowship at Keble College, and came to The Shakespeare Institute in 1990. I have also taught at the University of Reading, Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, London, and The Roehampton Institute. 

In 2005, I was consultant to BBC Worldwide for the DVD Edition of the BBC Complete Works of Shakespeare. In 2006, I won the Hoffman Prize for distinguished work on Christopher Marlowe. 

In 2010, I gave expert advice on the identity of the stolen Durham copy of the Shakespeare First Folio. I also write regularly for the Globe’s magazine, Around the Globe, on issues in dramatic history.

My research interests cover the full corpus of dramatic works written in the British Isles between the English Reformation and the English Revolution, including both commercial and literary plays, masques and entertainments, and drama in Latin, Greek, Cornish, and Welsh. I am completing a comprehensive chronological catalogue of this material for Oxford University Press.

• British drama, 1533-1642: a catalogue

I am the Associate General Editor of the Oxford English Drama series, and of  The Philological Museum, a website making available Neo-Latin texts and translations.

In 2001 I co-led a seminar on Machiavelli and English Renaissance Drama at the World Shakespeare Congress in Valencia, in 2002 contributed a paper on The Battle of Alcazar to the Société Française Shakespeare Conference in Paris, and in 2006 spoke on London civic drama and the Henrician Reformation at the Malone Society Centenary Conference. 

 I am also a delegate at the International Shakespeare Conference. Recently I have helped to organize staged readings of rarely performed plays for a number of conferences, including the Marlowe Society of America Conference (2003) and the Malone Society Centenary Conference.

I serve as a member of the Council of the Malone Society, and chair its Research Grants Committee.

For six years (2007-12) I was the co-compiler (with Kelley Costigan) of the annual census of Renaissance drama productions in Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama.

In 2009, I advised Maggs Brothers on the sale of the recently rediscovered MS play Oedipus (now at the Elizabethan Club, Yale).

In 2013, I was the academic co-ordinator of The Scholars’ Pitch, a joint Royal Shakespeare Company and Shakespeare Institute project to identify potential ‘discovery’ plays for production at the Swan Theatre.

In 2014, I advised extensively on Phillip Breen’s Royal Shakespeare Company production of The Shoemaker’s Holiday during its rehearsal process.