Shakespeare and the V&A

The Victorian period saw both the elevation of Shakespeare to the status of National Poet and the creation of the Victoria & Albert Museum as the National Collection of Art and Design. At first glance these two developments have surprisingly little to do with each other, but a closer look reveals that the Bard became a pervasive presence in a museum better known for furniture than folios.

Alongside his role in the Department of English and Related Literature, Bill was Director of the Centre for Renaissance & Early Modern Studies (2005-2011), and served as Associate Editor of Shakespeare Quarterly from 2001 to 2012. He has held visiting positions at Caltech, Queen Mary (London) and Keio University (Tokyo), and fellowships at the Folger, Huntington, New York Public Library, National Maritime Museum and Bard Graduate Center. His research is driven by a love of archives and other collections, and an interest in how objects from the past (textual and otherwise) come down to us, what they pick up along the way and how they speak across periods. He has published widely on the history of books and readers, the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, the interface between word and image and the relationship between knowledge and power.