Professor Lucy Munro took her BA in English Language and Literature at Manchester University, moving to King’s College London for her MA and PhD. She worked at the University of Reading and Keele University, where she taught for the English, Film and Media degree programmes, before returning to King’s in September 2013.
She is Secretary of the Marlowe Society of America, Publicity Officer for the Malone Society, and a member of the Architecture Research Group at Shakespeare’s Globe and the steering group of the London Renaissance Seminar.
The thread that runs through Prof. Munro’s research is an interest in the dynamic relationship between old and new in literary cultures and their afterlives. As a scholar and teacher of early modern literature, she is often concerned with presenting old texts to new audiences. Moreover, her research has dealt explicitly with questions such as: the place of youth in early modern theatre; the function of outmoded style in early modern literary culture; the revival and reshaping of old plays in performance; and the role of ageing and memory in the theatre.
She has published two books to date. The first, Children of the Queen’s Revels: A Jacobean Theatre Repertory(Cambridge University Press, 2005), focused on the most prominent of the children’s playing companies of early modern London – the ‘little eyases’ of Shakespeare’s Hamlet – examining the company’s history and their involvement in crucial developments in dramatic genre in the early 17th century. The second, Archaic Style in Early Modern Literature, 1590-1674 (Cambridge University Press, 2013), is a study of the ways in which early modern writers use linguistic, poetic or dramatic styles that would have seemed old-fashioned to their first audiences or readers. Looking at the works of canonical figures such as Shakespeare, Milton, Spenser and Jonson alongside those of Robert Southwell, Anna Trapnel, William Cartwright and others, it argues that the attempts of writers to reconstruct outmoded styles within their own works reveal a largely untold story about the workings of literary influence and tradition, the interactions between past and present, and the uncertain contours of English nationhood.
Theatre and Performance Publications
Books
Writing a Play with Robert Daborne. / Munro, Lucy Catherine.Rethinking Theatrical Documents in Early Modern England. ed. / Tiffany Stern. London : Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2019.
Shakespeare in the Theatre: The King’s Men. / Munro, Lucy Catherine.London : Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2019.
Articles and Book Chapters
‘As it was Played in the Blackfriars’: Jonson, Marston, and the Business of Playmaking. / Munro, Lucy Catherine.In: ENGLISH LITERARY RENAISSANCE, Vol. 50, No. 2, 15.11.2019.
Who Owned the Blackfriars Playhouse. / Munro, Lucy Catherine.In: SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY, 11.03.2019.
Comedy, Clowning and the Caroline King’s Men: Manuscript Plays and Performance. / Munro, Lucy Catherine.Early British Drama in Manuscript. ed. / Tamara Atkin; Laura Estill. Brepols, 2019.
Drama and the Playhouse. / Munro, Lucy Catherine.Gathering Force: Early Modern British Literature in Transition, 1557-1623. ed. / Kristen Poole; Lauren Shohet. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2019. p. 323-339.
Shakespeare and the Playing Companies. / Munro, Lucy Catherine.Shakespeare on the Record. ed. / Hannah Crummé. London : Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2019. p. 131-142.
The Queen and the Cockpit: Henrietta Maria’s Theatrical Patronage Revisited. / Munro, Lucy Catherine.In: Shakespeare Bulletin, Vol. 37, No. 1, 2019.
How Many Children Had Giles Fletcher the Elder? / Munro, Lucy.In: Notes and Queries, Vol. 65, No. 1, 01.03.2018, p. 122-127.
Alarums: Edward II and the Staging of History. / Munro, Lucy Catherine.Christopher Marlowe, Repertory, Commerce and the Book Trade. ed. / Roslyn Lander Knutson; Kirk Melnikoff. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2018. p. 68.
Performance and Artistic Collaboration
Dr Munro has worked extensively with theatre organisations such as Shakespeare’s Globe and the New Victoria Theatre, Newcastle-Under-Lyme. She also reviews books and theatre productions for The Times Literary Supplement.