After studying French and Spanish at Oxford, Roy qualified and practised as a property lawyer, working at a City law firm for a number of years. In 2007 he returned to Oxford to begin research on the theatre of early modern Spain. He has taught Spanish language and literature in Oxford (and for a while in London too) since 2011.

Teaching

Golden-Age literature (FHS papers VII and X), Spanish language, and all papers for the Preliminary Examination in Spanish.

Research Interests

The literature of the Spanish Golden Age (sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) and theatre in particular. Roy has recently completed a critical edition of San Nicolás de Tolentino, a saint’s play by the period’s most prolific dramatist, Lope de Vega. He is currently working on: seventeenth-century English translations of St Teresa’s spiritual autobiography, the Libro de la vida; Spanish literature depicting England’s Tudor monarchs; and innuendo in Lope de Vega’s religious drama.

Selected Publications

• Lope de Vega, San Nicolás de Tolentino, Teatro del Siglo de Oro, Ediciones críticas, 208 (Kassel: Reichenberger, 2016), 366 pp, comprising a first critical edition and an extensive study of this saint’s play.

• ‘“¡España viva!”: Personifications of Spain in Lope de Vega’s comedias de santos’, in Anuario Lope de Vega, Vol. 23 (2017): 361-81.
• ‘Ironic Allusion and the Human Mind in Calderón’s La cisma de Inglaterra’, in Modern Language Review, Vol. 111 (2016): 1004-28.
• ‘“La verdad que adoro es la que niego”: Symbolism and Sophistry in Calderón’s La cisma de Inglaterra’, in Bulletin of the Comediantes, Vol. 68.1 (2016): 159-77.
• ‘In Praise of Folly: Re-considering the Functions of Lope de Vega’s Saint’s Play graciosos’, in Bulletin of the Comediantes, Vol. 64.1 (2012): 19-34.
• ‘Performing Political Theory: Juan de Mariana’s Ideal Polity and Lope’s La vida de san Pedro Nolasco’, in On Wolves and Sheep, ed. by Aaron Kahn (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011), pp. 93-112.

Reviews

• Carmen Pinillos (ed.), Calderón de la Barca: El santo rey don Fernando (segunda parte), Autos sacramentales completos, 93 (Kassel: Reichenberger, 2016), in Bulletin of the Comediantes (forthcoming).
• Mirzam C. Pérez, ‘The “Comedia” of Virginity: Mary and the Politics of Seventeenth-Century Spanish Theater’ (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2012), in Bulletin of Spanish Studies, Vol. 91 (2014): 1262-64.
• Susan L. Fischer, ‘Reading Performance: Spanish Golden-Age Theatre and Shakespeare on the Modern Stage’ (Woodbridge: Tamesis, 2009), in Hispanic Research Journal, Vol. 11 (2010): 378-79.

Faculty webpage: http://www.mod-langs.ox.ac.uk/people/roy-norton