Elizabeth Schafer is Professor of Drama and Theatre Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London.

She has published performance histories of The Taming of the Shrew and Twelfth Night, a monograph on the work of women theatre directors, MsDirecting Shakespeare: Women Direct Shakespeare, and a biography of Lilian Baylis, who ran the Old Vic and Sadler’s Wells theatres, and was a founding mother of the National Theatre, the Royal Ballet and the English National Opera.

In 2013 she ran ‘The Mariam Project’ to mark the 400th anniversary of the publication of Elizabeth Cary’s The Tragedy of Mariam and in 2016 she dramaturged a ‘new’ play by Shakespeare entitled Margaret of Anjou.

Earlier this year she published Theatre & Christianity which offers a radical new reading of Isabella in Measure For Measure.

She is editing Richard Brome’s The City Wit and The Northern Lass for the Oxford University Press complete edition of Brome’s plays.

She is currently writing a performance history of her favourite Shakespeare play The Merry Wives of Windsor.