Lloyd Davis. 26 February 1959 - 7 August 2005

Lloyd Davis, before his untimely death, gained recognition as amongst the most internationally respected Shakespearean scholars of his generation. He was president of the Australian and New Zealand Shakespeare Association, and co-convenor of the International Shakespeare Congress to be held in 2006 at his university in Queensland. His broad intellectual interests, articulacy, and wonderful ability to engage and encourage others saw him frequently called on in planning new collaborative ventures, most recently in the ARC Network for Early European Research. I am acutely aware that to say these things in Lloyd's presence would have disconcerted such a modest man.

Lloyd's book, Guise and Disguise: Rhetoric and Characterization in the English Renaissance (1993) is accepted as an original reframing of an apparently settled subject, Shakespearean characterization, and as such it has caused major rethinking in the field. Disguise is taken as a trope for the whole activity of expressing identity through personae, thereby casting doubt on notions of stable or essential self. Contemporary, sophisticated theory blends with original readings and close critical engagement with texts, an all too rare combination. The book demonstrates the abiding qualities of all Lloyd's writing — an outstandingly high standard of historical scholarship, a capacity to order complexity into lucidity, to bring light into dark corners, with subtle intelligence and astonishing clarity and economy of thought.

Lloyd published books which established him in the burgeoning field of sexuality and literature, not only in the Renaissance but in later writing: Sexuality and Textuality in Henry James: Reading through the Virginal (Vol. 1 of a Sexuality and Literature Series, 1988), (as editor) Virginal Sexuality and Textuality in Victorian Literature (1993), and Sexuality and Gender in the English Renaissance: An Annotated Edition of Contemporary Documents (1998). Many of his articles focused on issues of sexual morality, masculinity, 'the figure of woman', androgyny, and self-formation through 'the Civilizing Process' involved in maintaining a balance between compulsion and restraint in sexuality. One article "Death-marked love: Desire and Presence in Romeo and Juliet" has been recognized as a classic and reprinted in several critical anthologies. The idea for a monograph, Shakespearean Sexuality: Critical Desires and the Invention of Modern Sexual Morality was accepted by Routledge just before his death. The word 'forthcoming', usually so hopeful, in this instance carries a deep sadness. It may not come forth at all. We will not know where the footprints were leading.

Autobiography, in the period before autobiography is supposed to have existed, was his focus in two books co-edited with Ron Bedford and Philippa Kelly: Early Modern Autobiography: Theories, Genres, Practices (2006) and Early Modern English Lives: Autobiography and Self-Representation 1500-1660 (2006). An essay on 'The Love Life of Ben Jonson' is an intriguing foray into biography. Writers forget nothing and waste nothing, and even traces of Lloyd's early, false start in undergraduate Law re-emerged in 2004 as 'Quiddities, Quillities, Tenures and Tricks: Shakespeare and the Law', and he was wryly amused that this was a paper invited by judges and published in the Australian Law Journal.

There was a close nexus between Lloyd's research and teaching, and the connections were ones he analyzed. The extremely useful co-written books, Tools for Cultural Studies: An Introduction (with Tony Thwaites and Warwick Mules, 1994), Introducing Cultural and Media Studies: A Semiotic Approach (with Tony Thwaites and Warwick Mules, 2002), and Structures and Strategies: An Introduction to Academic Writing (with Susan McKay, 1996), are clearly based on the classroom experience that earned him awards for outstanding teaching, including the high honour of the Australian Award for University Teaching — Humanities and the Arts. His own students appreciated the same courteous consideration and individually tailored attention as Lloyd's international colleagues. He saw the educational mission as having no boundaries, and delighted in visiting schools.

Lloyd turned collaboration into a fine art. Whether as editor of a book or of the journal AUMLA, as co-editor, conference convenor or head of department, he was a pure delight to work with. Nothing was ever left to...