I enjoyed Michael Billington’s piece on Sir Gregory Doran’s production of Two Gentlemen of Verona at Oxford, in which Billington notes that “the idea of engaging professionals” for Oxford student theatre “is itself not new” (10 May). In fact, as I discuss in my recent book, that idea dates back at least as far as the 17th century. The professional playwright Ben Jonson was invited for a stint at Christ Church, Oxford, in the late 1610s; when King Charles I visited the university in 1636, the students who performed for his entertainment received instruction from one of the leading actors in London. Doran is part of a long tradition of professional theatre practitioners who brought their expertise to the Oxford stage.
Daniel Blank
Assistant professor, department of English studies, Durham University
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