Richard C. McCoy Department of English Ph.D. Program in English Queens College, CUNY Graduate Center, CUNY Flushing, NY 11367 365 Fifth Avenue 718 997-4600 New York, NY 10016 212 817-8332 EDUCATION Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley 1975 B.A., Stanford University 1968 EMPLOYMENT Professor of English, Queens College and Graduate Center, CUNY 1989- Personnel and Budget Committee, Queens College 2011-14 Curriculum Committee, English Department, Queens College 2002-11 Honors Committee, Queens College 2002-10 Director, Honors Program in the Humanities, Queens College 2000-7 Executive Committee, English Program, Graduate Center 1991-Present Member, Faculty Membership Committee 2006-Present Chair, Faculty Membership Committee, English Program, Graduate Center 2006-10 Admissions Committee, English Program, Graduate Center 2003-6 Student Progress Officer 1998-0 l Acting Executive Officer, Ph.D. Program in English, Graduate Center, CUNY 1996 Deputy Executive Officer, Ph.D. Program in English, Graduate Center, CUNY 1991-96 • Chair, Admissions & Financial Aid, English Program, Graduate Center 1991-95 • Coordinator, Course Assigrunents, English Program, Graduate Center 1991-95 • Curriculum Committee, English Program, Graduate Center 1994-00 • Faculty Membership Committee, English Program, Graduate Center 1990-94 • Co-author, Report on the Future of the Ph.D. Program in English 1991-92 • Organizer, Annual Shakespeare Institute, Graduate Center 1991-04 • Presidential Search Committee, Graduate Center 1990-91 Visiting Professor of English, Princeton University 1997 Visiting Professor of English and American Literature, 1988-89 Beijing University, China Associate Professor of English, Graduate Center, CUNY 1986-89 Associate Professor of English, Queens College, CUNY 1983-89 Assistant Professor of English, Queens College, CUNY 1979-83 Mellon Research Fellow and Lecturer, Columbia University 1977-79 Teacher, Lenox School, New York, NY 1976-77 PUBLICATIONS: BOOKS Faith in Shakespeare (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013). Alterations of State: Sacred Kingship in the English Reformation. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002). Honorable Mention, Association of American Publishers, Richard C. McCoy 2 Scholarly Publishing Division Awards. The Rites of Knighthood: The Literature and Politics of Elizabethan Chivalry. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989). Sir Philip Sidney: Rebellion in Arcadia (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1979). Nominated for the James Russell Lowell prize, the Explicator Literary Foundation Award, and the Northeastern Graduate Schools Association Award, 1980. CURRENT PROJECT: Shakespeare's Clowns: Mockery and Mimesis. My current project is a study of Shakespeare's major comic figures - his fools, clowns, and jokers - and the challenges they pose to dramatic decorum and plausibility. Hamlet's instructions to the players are pertinent and often taken as a statement of Shakespeare's own artistic convictions. In Hamlet 3.2, histrionics that "tear a passion to tatters" and imitate "humanity so abominably" are repudiated, and naturalism that holds ''the mirror up to nature" is endorsed. Hamlet is especially determined that "clowns speak no mote than is set down for them" rather than improvising for vulgar laughs, insisting "That's villainous, and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it." Many discern in this speech a final rejection of Will Kemp,just departed from Shakespeare's company. Kemp had been a popular entertainer and established celebrity. He starred as the endearingly megalomaniac Bottom in Midsummer Night's Dream and the charming scoundrel Falstaff in Henry IV, l and 2, but his bawdy jigs and unruly improvisationreflected an older, more disruptive comic style. He left Shakespeare's company in 1599, embarking soon after on a cross-country solo song-and-danceperformance. Robert Armin replaced him, displaying a more subtle and sardonic wit as Touchstone in As You Like It, Feste in Twelfth Night, and the Fool in King Lear. Nevertheless, all these comic figures remain wryly detached from the action, frequently breaking through the "fourth wall" by directly addressing the audience and providing sardonic commentary on the other characters' follies. I will use recent scholarly advances in theater history to compare the styles of these two principal actors in Shakespeare's company and explore contemporary audience response. I will also consider the persistent detachment and aggressive mockery that enable comedians to stand outside the action in performances of all periods. The book will discuss the paradoxical impact of the clown's ridicule on dramatic verisimilitude and our appreciation of comedy. PUBLICATIONS: ARTICLES "Awakening Faith in The Winter's Tale," Shakespeare and Early Modern Religion, eds. David Loewenstein and Michael Witmore (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2014) "Miracles and Mysteries in The Comedy of Errors," Shakespeare and Religion: Early Modern and Postmodern Perspectives, ed. Ken Jackson and Arthur Marotti (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2011), 79-96. "Law Sports and the Night of Errors: Shakespeare and the Inns of Court," The Intellectual and Cultural World of the Early Modern Inns of Court, ed. Jayne Elisabeth Archer, Elizabeth Goldring, and Sarah Knight (Manchester University Press, 2010), 286-301. '"The Tragedy of the Handkerchief: Objects Sacred and Profane in Shakespeare's Richard C. McCoy 3 Othello," Medieval and Early Modern Devotional Objects in Global Perspective: Translations of the Sacred, ed. Elizabeth Robertson and Jennifer Jahner (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 155-166. "Church and State in the New World," The World of 1607. An essay for the Jamestown Centenary catalogue, ed. David Armitage (Jamestown, VA: Jamestown-York Foundation, 2007): 242-248 "Spectacle and Equivocation in Macbeth," Spectacle and Public Performance in the Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Ed. Robert E. Stillman (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 145-156. "'The Grace of Grace' and Double-Talk in Macbeth." Shakespeare Survey 57 (2004): 27-37. "Shakespearean Tragedy and Religious Identity." The Blackwell Companion to Shakespeare's Tragedies. Ed. Jean Howard and Richard Dutton (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003) 290-325. "Shakespeare and Kingship." Guide to the Season's Plays (Washington D.C.: The Shakespeare Theatre, 2003): 8-12 "'Look Upon Me Sir': Relationships in King Lear," Representations, 81 (2003): 46-60. "A Wedding and Four Funerals: Conjunction and Commemoration in Hamlet." Shakespeare Survey 54 (2001): 122-139. "Loves Martyrs: Shakespeare's 'Phoenix and Turtle' and the Sacrificial Sonnets." Religion and Culture in Renaissance England. Ed. Debora Shuger and Claire McEachem (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 188-208. "Eulogies to Elegies: Poetic Distance in Spenser's April Eclogue." Soundings of Things Done: Essays in Honor of S. K. Heninger. Ed. Peter E. Medine and Joseph Wittreich (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1997), 52-69. "Old English Honour in an Evil Time: Aristocratic Principle in the 1620s." Ed. R. Malcolm Smuts, ed. The Stuart Court and Europe. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 133-156. "Lords of Liberty: Francis Davison and the Cult ofElizabeth." The Reign of Elizabeth I: Court and Culture in the Last Decade. Ed. John Guy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 212-228. "Sixteenth Century Lyric Poetry." The Columbia History of British Poetry. Ed. Carl Woodring. (New York Columbia Press, 1994), 179-202. "'The Wonderful! Spectacle': The Civic Progress and Troublesome Coronation of Elizabeth I." Coronations: Medieval and Early Modern Monarchic Ritual. Ed. Janos M. Bak. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 217-227. "Sir Philip Sidney and Elizabethan Chivalry." Sir Philip Sidney's Achievements. Ed. M. J.B. Allen, Dominic Baker-Smith, Arthur F. Kinney (New York: AMS Press, 1990), 32-41. "'Thou Idol Ceremony': Elizabeth I, the Henriad, and the Rites of the English Monarchy." Urban Life in the Renaissance. Ed. Susan Zimmerman and Ronald F. E. Weismann (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1989), 240-266. "Gascoigne's 'Poemata Castrata': The Wages of Courtly Success." Criticism 27 (1985): 29-55. "From the Tower to the Tiltyard: Robert Dudley's Return to Glory." Historical Journal 27 (1984): 425-435. Richard C. McCoy 4 "'A Dangerous Image': The Earl of Essex and Elizabethan Chivalry." The Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 13 (1983): 313-329. PUBLICATIONS: REVIEWS Fiero Boitani, The Gospel According to Shakespeare, Renaissance Quarterly (Forthcoming) Adrian Streete. Protestantism and Drama in Early Modern England. Shakespeare Quarterly, 63.1 (Spring, 2012) Edward Fechter. Shakespeare Studies Today: Romanticism Lost Shakespeare Quarterly, 63.2 (Fall, 2012) Alice Hunt, The Drama of Coronation: Medieval Ceremony in Early Modern England, Renaissance Quarterly, 62 (2009): 1006-1008. Oliver Arnold, The Third Citizen: Shakespeare's Theater and the Early Modern House of Commons, Comparative Drama 42 (2008): 250-253 Judith Anderson, Translating Investments: Metaphor and the Dynamic of Cultural Change in Tudor-Stuart England, Spenser Review (2007) Tom Betteridge, Literature and Politics in the English Reformation, The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 57 (2006): 151-152 "Take Pains, Be Perfect": Bottom as Actor in Midsummer Night's Dream Quarterly 58 (2005): 1443-1444 Richard A. McCabe, Spenser's Aionstrous Regiment: Elizabethan Ireland and the Poetics of Difference, Renaissance Quarterly