Ian Munro

Ian Munro (B.A., University of British Columbia; Ph.D., Harvard University) is a professor of English and drama at UC Irvine specializing in early modern English theater. His research interests include European drama and performance, critical theory, urban space and representation, early modern popular culture, crowds and audiences, the intersections of theater and print culture, and the performance of wit.

He is the author of The Figure of the Crowd in Early Modern London: The City and Its Double (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), which examines the relationship between perceptions of the crowd and the transformation of urban space in early modern London. His forthcoming book project, Laughing Matter: The Publication and Performance of Wit in Early Modern England, explores how the growth of print culture shaped the Renaissance fascination with theatrical jesting.

Munro has also edited A Woman’s Answer is Never to Seek: Early Modern Jestbooks, 1526–1635 (Ashgate, 2007), which collects early jestbooks that illuminate perspectives on women’s lives and representation in the period. His articles and book chapters address topics such as jestbooks in Much Ado About Nothing, wit in John Marston’s The Malcontent, publicity in Thomas Middleton’s A Game at Chess, and orality in the plays of the Queen’s Men.

In addition to his scholarship, Munro has served as a dramaturg in productions of Timon of Athens and Endgame with Robert Cohen, Measure for Measure with Phil Thompson, and A Flea in Her Ear, Sunday in the Park with George, and West Side Story with Eli Simon.

Affiliated with the Center for Early Cultures and New Swan Shakespeare Center.