Q&A: London professor honoured after teaching Shakespeare for nearly 50 years [Video]

Distinguished professor Paul Werstine has made it his life’s work to teach and edit the plays and poems of William Shakespeare.

The King’s University College faculty member is known around the globe for co-editing the Folger Shakespeare Library editions, the world’s most prestigious collection of Shakespeare. Werstine is retiring after nearly five decades of teaching Shakespeare, and will mark the milestone with a conference coming to London, titled Shakespeare After Werstine.

Werstine joined London Morning host Andrew Brown on Shakespeare Day to talk about his career and the three-day conference coming to King’s on May 1.

The following has been edited for length and clarity:

Andrew Brown: Almost five decades. How did Shakespeare end up becoming the focus of your career?

Paul Werstine: Well, I kind of got into it through the back door. When I was in graduate school, I was interested in the way the technologies of printing in Shakespeare’s time might have affected the text we’ve received as his. …