Professor David Francis Taylor
Professor of English, Faculty of English
Professor Taylor specializes in British literature and culture from 1660 to 1830, with particular interests in theatre as well as on the relationship between words and images.
About
Professor David Francis Taylor is the author of two books: Theatres of Opposition (2012), which explores how opposition politics was played out on the London stage in the 18th century; and The Practice of Parody: A Literary History of Caricature (2018), which looks at how political cartoons in the ‘golden age of caricature’ made use of literary texts by the likes of Shakespeare and Milton. Professor Taylor is also co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of the Georgian Theatre, 1737-1832.
Professor Taylor has extensive experience of public engagement. He's appeared on programmes for the BBC, Channel 4 and History Hits, and also on several podcasts and radio shows. In 2017, he curated the exhibition Draw New Mischief: 250 Years of Shakespeare and Political Cartoons at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, a version of which then travelled with the RSC to the Barbican, London. In 2022, he collaborated with a company specializing in virtual and augmented reality technology to create an AR smartphone app that allows users to step into a spectacular pantomime from the 1780s at the press of a button. You can download this app, A Stage in Time, via Apple’s App Store or Google Play.
At the moment, Professor Taylor is working with theatre companies to bring forgotten plays of the 18th century – by women writers especially – back to the stage. Since 2022, he has organized script-in-hand performances of six plays by 18th-century women, with more in the pipeline. He’s a founding member of The R/18 Collective, an international group of scholars who are working with professional theatremakers to explore the neglected repertory of Restoration and 18th-century British theatre.
Expertise
- Spectacle
- Theatre and performance
- History of the theatre
- Satirical cartoons
- Shakespeare across British cultural and political history
- Satire and parody
- The relationship between word and image
Selected publications
Media experience
Professor David Francis Taylor has appeared in programmes on BBC Two and Channel 4 (see examples below), as well as BBC News 24 and a number of radio programmes. He has twice been published in The Guardian.
Recent media work
- Royal Favourites (History Hit TV, 2025)
- Antiques Road Trip, Series 20 Ep. 2 (BBC 2, 2020)
- “Britain’s Most Historic Towns”, Series 1 Ep. 5: Regency Cheltenham (Channel 4, 2018)
- “Et tu, Trump? Political cartoons inspired by Shakespeare” (The Guardian, 2017)
- Free Thinking - Shakespeare in cartoons (BBC Radio 4, 2017)
- “Five things we learned from ‘the father of the political cartoon” (CNN.com, 2015)
- “An attack on the royal carriage by angry protesters. Sound familiar?” (The Guardian, 2010)