Alfred Bennett Harbage (July 18, 1901 – May 1976) was an influential

Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...

scholar of the mid-20th century.

Life

He was born in

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

and received his undergraduate degree and doctorate from the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

. He lectured on Shakespeare both there and at Columbia before becoming a professor at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

, where he taught for many years. He was the General Editor of the

Pelican Books Pelican Books is a non-fiction imprint of Penguin Books"About Penguin - Compa ...

edition of the works of Shakespeare. He also wrote a number of well-received books on Shakespeare's works, among them ''Shakespeare's Audience'' (1941), ''As They Liked It'' (1947), ''Shakespeare and the Rival Traditions'' (1952), and ''Shakespeare Without Words'' (1966). Though best known for his work on Shakespeare, Harbage's literary scholarship extended to his successors too; he did important work on a range of seventeenth-century figures. In this area, his books ''Thomas Killigrew, Cavalier Dramatist 1612-1683'' (1930), ''Sir William Davenant, Poet Adventurer 1606-1668'' (1935), and ''Cavalier Drama'' (1936) are noteworthy. For an overview of the field, his ''Annals of English Drama 975-1700'' (1964) is a compedium of original materials and a vital resource for scholarship. He also wrote crime fiction under the

pen name A pen name, also called a ''nom de plume'' or a literary double, is a pseudonym (or, in some cases, a variant form of a real name) adopted by an author and printed on the title page or by-line of their works in place of their real name. A pen na ...

Thomas Kyd Thomas Kyd (baptised 6 November 1558; buried 15 August 1594) was an English playwright, the author of ''The Spanish Tragedy'', and one of the most important figures in the development of Elizabethan drama. Although well known in his own time, ...

(a reference to the 16th-century English

playwright A playwright or dramatist is a person who writes plays. Etymology The word "play" is from Middle English pleye, from Old English plæġ, pleġa, plæġa ("play, exercise; sport, game; drama, applause"). The word "wright" is an archaic English ...

), publishing several stories in ''

Ellery Queen Ellery Queen is a pseudonym created in 1929 by American crime fiction writers Frederic Dannay and Manfred Bennington Lee and the name of their main fictional character, a mystery writer in New York City who helps his police inspector father solve ...

's Mystery Magazine'', as well as four novels: ''Blood is a Beggar'' (1946), ''Blood of Vintage'' (1947), ''Blood on the Bosom Devine'' (1948), and ''Cover His Face'' (1949). The first three are hard-boiled murder mysteries, involving ex-boxer turned police officer Sam Phelan; the last is an academic mystery dealing with a researcher seeking the first published work of

Samuel Johnson Samuel Johnson (18 September 1709 – 13 December 1784), often called Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. The ''Oxford ...

. One reviewer said of his work that "Harbage treats pomposity with sarcasm, hypocrisy with irony, and failure with gentleness."Bruce Murphy, ''The Encyclopedia of Murder and Mystery'', PALGRAVE, New York, NY , 1999 (p.48) Harbage was elected to the

American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...

in 1959 and the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...

in 1960.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Harbage, Alfred 1901 births 1976 deaths Harbage, Alfred (Thomas Kyd) Harvard University faculty Shakespearean scholars University of Pennsylvania alumni Columbia University faculty Educators from Philadelphia 20th-century American novelists American male novelists 20th-century poets English male dramatists and playwrights Writers from Philadelphia Novelists from Pennsylvania Novelists from Massachusetts Novelists from New York (state) 20th-century American male writers Members of the American Philosophical Society