Shakespeare and the Origins of English

Leah S. Marcus is Edwin Mims Professor of English at Vanderbilt University. She is author of Childhood and Cultural Despair: A Theme and Variations in Seventeenth-Century Literature (1978), The Politics of Mirth: Jonson, Herrick, Milton, Marvell, and the Defense of Old Holiday Pastimes (1986), Puzzling Shakespeare: Local Reading and Its Discontents (1988), and Unediting the Renaissance: Shakespeare, Marlowe, Milton (1996). She was coeditor of an edition of the writings of Elizabeth I (2000-2003), has edited The Merchant of Venice for Norton (2006), and is working on an edition of The Duchess of Malfifor Arden.