 | Eugene Mersereau Waith |
In Memoriam: Eugene Waith
Expert on Elizabethan and Jacobean theater
Eugene Mersereau Waith, a leading scholar of Shakespeare and English Renaissance
drama, died on Oct. 25 in New Haven. He was 94.
T H I S
Waith, who was the Douglas Tracy Smith Professor Emeritus of English, taught
at Yale for more than four decades until his retirement in 1983.
Known for his work as a critic, theater historian and textual scholar, Waith
was the author of numerous books and articles dealing with English and European
drama from the Middle Ages to the present.
“Gene Waith was a first-rate scholar and teacher of the Elizabethan and
Jacobean theater whose publications commanded respect worldwide,” notes
long-time colleague, Fred C. Robinson, the Douglas Tracy Smith Professor of English
Emeritus.
A specialist in the intellectual sources and development of early modern dramatic
genres, Waith produced major studies of tragicomedy in “The Pattern of
Tragicomedy in Beaumont and Fletcher” (1952), of tragedy from Marlowe to
Dryden in “The Herculean Hero” (1962), and of the 17th-century heroic
play in “Ideas of Greatness” (1971).
Waith was also a distinguished textual editor whose editions include Ben Jonson’s “Bartholomew
Fair” (1963) and Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” for the final,
revised edition of The Yale Shakespeare (1954), a series which began at Yale
in 1918. Waith’s editions of Shakespeare’s “Titus Andronicus” (1983)
and “The Two Noble Kinsmen” (1989) were among the earliest volumes
to appear in the new Oxford Shakespeare, a series that has yet to reach completion.
Waith’s innovative attention to staging and performance practice, a feature
throughout his work, is highlighted in “The Dramatic Moment” (1967),
an anthology of world drama for students, and in the essays on plays and performances
collected in his “Patterns and Perspectives in English Renaissance Drama” (1988).
A fellow of Pierson College since 1942, Waith was a renowned teacher. He was awarded the DeVane Medal for distinguished
teaching and scholarship by the Yale chapter of Phi Beta Kappa in 1984, and in
1985 he received the Wilbur Cross Medal for distinguished achievement from the
Yale Graduate Alumni Association.
Born in 1912 in Buffalo, New York, Waith was educated at the Thacher School in
Ojai, California, and majored in English at Yale as a member of the Class of
1935. He received the New York Yale Club Prize in his freshman year and was elected
to Phi Beta Kappa in his junior year. After receiving his B.A. and studying for
a year at Cambridge University, he returned to Yale, where, upon completing his
Ph.D. in English in 1939, he was appointed instructor in English.
Waith interrupted his teaching duties to serve in the United States Army 1943-1946.
Enlisting as a private, he was promoted to first lieutenant and served in Europe
as a counterintelligence officer for the Office of Strategic Services. He was
awarded the Bronze Star and the Croix de Guerre.
Returning to Yale in 1946 as an assistant professor of English, Waith was promoted
to associate professor in 1952 and to professor in 1963. He was appointed to
the Douglas Tracy Smith Professorship of English in 1971. He served as chair
of Yale’s interdisciplinary program in History, the Arts and Letters and
helped to establish the major in theater studies.
Waith was a former president of the English Institute and a member of the Modern
Language Association, the Renaissance Society of America, the Shakespeare Association
of America, the Connecticut Academy, and the American Society for Theatre Research.
He served as librarian and president of Yale’s Elizabethan Club and was
a member of the board of trustees of the Long Wharf Theatre and the board of
directors of the Neighborhood Music School in New Haven.
His wife of 48 years, Margaret Deakers Waith, predeceased him in 1987. He is
survived by 12 nieces and nephews.
Memorial contributions may be made to the Yale Elizabethan Club or to the Neighborhood
Music School in New Haven.
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