Professor Anne Barton - Obituary - Telegraph So by the Elizabethan period, drama had reached a precarious equilibrium whereby the "play world" excluded the audience at the same time as recognising its presence. Shakespeare, Anne Barton argued, exploited such ambiguities in order to explore the relationship between art and life, actor and audience, pretence and reality, reminding us that "elements of illusion are present in ordinary life and that between the world and the stage there exists a complicated interplay of resemblance that is part of the perfection and nobility of the drama itself as a form." Such insights had a huge influence on stagings of Shakespeare's works. For many years RSC productions were informed by Anne Barton's erudite programme essays; she also contributed introductions to new editions of Shakespeare's works - most notably to the comedies in the extremely influential Riverside edition, aimed at, and still heavily used by, students in Britain and America. In her introduction to the 1980 New Penguin edition of Hamlet she noted that the play was "unique in the density and pervasiveness of its theatrical self-reference." In the same year an RSC production, directed by her husband and starring Michael Pennington as the Dane, featured benches around the side of the stage upon which actors would sit to watch the performance as it took place, while rows of props and costumes were visible at the back of the stage. In fact, though, in academic circles Anne Barton was equally respected for her work on English comedy - the theme of a festschrift dedicated to her in 1994. Describing herself as "very much an Odyssey person, not an Iliad person," she had an influence on critical thinking about comedy across a wide range of texts, and was the author of Ben Jonson, Dramatist (1982), The Names of Comedy (1990) and Byron: Don Juan (1992). In her younger days Anne Barton cut a strikingly elegant and glamorous figure. As a young lecturer at Cambridge in the 1960s and at Oxford (where she became the first woman Fellow of New College) in the 1970s, her penchant for miniskirts and thigh-length leather boots left a lasting impression on generations of male undergraduates. But, just as she was never neutral about literature, Anne Barton was never neutral about people, and was given to intense likes and dislikes - not always rational. Intimidating to undergraduates who failed to get their essays in on time, she applied a coruscating wit to scholars with whom she disagreed and could be a difficult colleague. But those whom she liked and who responded to great literature were treated to great learning, great eloquence and boundless generosity. She gave loyalty and inspired loyalty. She observed the highest standards in her work and expected no less of others. An only child of wealthy parents, she was born Bobbyann Roesen on May 9 1933 in New York and attended Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania, moving to Britain after graduation to do a PhD under Muriel Bradbrook at Girton College, Cambridge. As an undergraduate she had won a prize for an essay entitled Shakespeare and the Idea of the Play. At Cambridge she developed it into a thesis about the legacy of medieval theatre in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama - and later into her best-known book. After taking her doctorate Anne Barton became a lecturer, a Fellow of Girton College and director of studies in English, before moving to the University of London, where she spent two years as Hildred Carlile Professor of English and head of department at Bedford College. In 1974 she moved to New College, Oxford, where she spent 10 years before returning to Cambridge to take up a post as Professor of English. During her years at Oxford she and her husband John Barton lived in some style in an Elizabethan manor outside Stratford-upon-Avon, restored by Michael Reardon, the architect of the Swan Theatre and a close friend. After returning to Cambridge, she bought a Jacobean manor house near Wisbech, while her elegant rooms in Trinity, overlooking Nevile's Court, were furnished with an exquisite collection of art and antiques. A superb cook, she entertained on a lavish scale, hosting house parties where favoured academic colleagues, struggling through piles of undergraduate exam papers, could relieve the tedium with excellent food, wine and company. Anne Barton served on several academic editorial boards and was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1991. Her last book, Essays, Mainly Shakespearean, was published in 1994. Anne Barton is survived by her husband, whom she married in 1969 after her previous marriage to William Righter was dissolved. She is also survived by her two cats, the last in a long series, which arrived from the cattery answering to the names Robin and Batman and were promptly, and very typically, renamed Damon and Pythias. Professor Anne Barton, born May 9 1933, died November 11 2013