Frederick P Kiefer

Interests

Research

Shakespeare and the drama of his contemporaries.Elizabethan visual culture.

Teaching

Shakespeare and the drama of his contemporaries.Elizabethan visual culture.

Courses

Scholarly Contributions

Books

• Kiefer, F. P. (2024). Italy's Renaissance in Buildings and Gardens: A Personal Journey. London and New Yo0rk: Anthem Press.
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  The Renaissance in Italy based on scholarship and on five trips to the country.
• Kiefer, F. P. (2015). English Drama from “Everyman” to 1660: Performance and Print.. Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.
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  The stage history and printing history of every surviving English play from 1500 to 1660. Eight hundred entries. 945 pages. Despite delays, I have been willing to proceed with this press for 2 reasons: 1. the typography of the publisher's books is first-rate; 2. the press allowed me to publish a book of 950 pages without cuts. That's very unusual these days.
• Kiefer, F., Medieval, R. M., Association, R., & others, . (2009). Masculinities and femininities in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Brepols.
• Kiefer, F. (2003). Shakespeare's Visual Theatre: Staging the Personified Characters. Cambridge University Press.
• Kiefer, F. (1996). Writing on the Renaissance Stage: Written Words, Printed Pages, Metaphoric Books. Newark, DE, London: University of Delaware Press; Associated University Presses.
• Kiefer, F. (1983). Fortune and Elizabethan Tragedy. Huntington Library Press.

Chapters

• Kiefer, F. P. (2020). "The Mad Ophelia". In Critical Insights: Feminism, edited by Robert C. Evans(pp 3-25). Amenia, New York: Salem Press/Grey House Publishing.
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  "The Mad Ophelia" treats the three different texts of Hamlet, each of which gives different information about the character. I reconstruct the appearance of the character in Shakespeare's first performance of the play. Specifically, I argue that the traditional view of Ophelia, attired entirely in white, has been a mistake. It is just as likely that she was dressed in black. The original stage direction indicates that Ophelia enters playing a lute. I discovered that personifications of Melancholy customarily play lutes.
• Kiefer, F. P. (2016). Shakespearean Comedy and the Discourses of Print. In The Oxford Handbook of Shakespearean Comedy. Oxford University Press.
• Kiefer, F. P. (2019). "Collaborating with Shakespeare". In How and Why We Teach Shakespeare, edited by Sidney Homan(pp 138-45). London: Routledge.
• Kiefer, F. P. (2018). "Shakespearean Comedy and the Discourses of Print". In The Oxford Handbook of Shakespearean Comedy, edited by Heather Hirschfeld(pp 395-410). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Kiefer, F. P. (2012). Architecture. In The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare, edited by Arthur Kinney(pp 680-701). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Journals/Publications

• Kiefer, F. P. (2019). John Lyly and the Most Misread Speech in Shakespeare. Connotations, 28, 26-42.
• Kiefer, F. P. (2018). "Hamlet's 'What a Piece of Work is a Man". Notes and Queries, 65(1), 74-75.
• Kiefer, F. P. (2017). "Accidental Judgments" and "Casual Slaughters" in Hamlet: Horatio's Eyewitness Account. Shakespeare Studies, 45, 184-202.
• Kiefer, F. P. (2015). “Lost and Found: William Boyle’s Jugurth.”. Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England..
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  This article was supposed to have been published in late 2014. But in December I received a newly copyedited version of the article and the news that it would be published in 2015.

Presentations

• Kiefer, F. P. (2016, March). Topicality: The Drama Adapts to a New Political World, an invited lecture. Renaissance Society of America, annual meeting. Boston: Renaissance Society of America.
• Kiefer, F. P. (2016, October). Why Hamlet and Horatio Cannot Agree. An invited presentation, part of the Scholar Series for the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. The English Department of Arizona State University: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.

Reviews

• Kiefer, F. P. (2017. Review of "A Mirror for Magistrates" in Context: Literature, History, and Politis in Early Modern England(pp electronic). Modern Philology.
• Kiefer, F. P. (2014. Sarah Wall-Randell, The Immaterial Book: Reading and Romance in Early Modern England.(pp 1459-60).