Clifford Leech was a prolifically published British-born professor

Professor

A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...

 of English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 at University College at the University of Toronto

University of Toronto

The University of Toronto is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution of higher learning in Upper Canada...

 1963-74. His contribution to Christopher Marlowe

Christopher Marlowe

Christopher Marlowe was an English dramatist, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. As the foremost Elizabethan tragedian, next to William Shakespeare, he is known for his blank verse, his overreaching protagonists, and his mysterious death.A warrant was issued for Marlowe's arrest on 18 May...

 studies was considered "historically important." In Canada he was considered a "distinguished scholar." His publications mainly concerned Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists, including William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...

, John Webster

John Webster

John Webster was an English Jacobean dramatist best known for his tragedies The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi, which are often regarded as masterpieces of the early 17th-century English stage. He was a contemporary of William Shakespeare.- Biography :Webster's life is obscure, and the dates...

 and John Ford

John Ford

John Ford was an American film director. He was famous for both his westerns such as Stagecoach, The Searchers, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and adaptations of such classic 20th-century American novels as The Grapes of Wrath...

. He also wrote a book on American playwright Eugene O'Neill

Eugene O'Neill

Eugene Gladstone O'Neill was an American playwright and Nobel laureate in Literature. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into American drama techniques of realism earlier associated with Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish...

. Leech's published reviews include one on a Canadian play, The Last of the Tsars

The Last of the Tsars

"The Last of the Tsars" is a play by Michael Bawtree. The action takes place in Russia between 1912 and 1919, and follows the fortunes of the Romanov family and of Russia in the tumultuous years leading up to the Revolution of 1917, and beyond, to the assassination of the Romanov family by the...

, produced at Stratford, Ontario

Stratford, Ontario

Stratford is a city on the Avon River in Perth County in southwestern Ontario, Canada with a population of 32,000.When the area was first settled by Europeans in 1832, the townsite and the river were named after Stratford-upon-Avon, England. It is the seat of Perth County. Stratford was...

 in 1966 on the subject of the last Russian czar.

Leech was a scholarly colleague of Northrop Frye

Northrop Frye

Herman Northrop Frye, was a Canadian literary critic and literary theorist, considered one of the most influential of the 20th century....

.

Life

He obtained his M.A. at the University of London

University of London

-20th century:Shortly after 6 Burlington Gardens was vacated, the University went through a period of rapid expansion. Bedford College, Royal Holloway and the London School of Economics all joined in 1900, Regent's Park College, which had affiliated in 1841 became an official divinity school of the...

 in 1932 with an essay on the poet Thomas Southerne

Thomas Southerne

Thomas Southerne , Irish dramatist, was born at Oxmantown, near Dublin, in 1660, and entered Trinity College, Dublin in 1676. Two years later he was entered at the Middle Temple, London....

. His doctoral thesis at the University of London was "Private performances and amateur theatricals (excluding the academic stage) from 1580 to 1660" (1935).
While teaching at the University of Durham, Leech became Censor then, in 1948, the first Principal of St Cuthbert's Society

St Cuthbert's Society

St Cuthbert's Society, colloquially known as Cuth's, is one of sixteen collegiate bodies within the University of Durham. It was founded in 1888 for students who were not attached to the existing colleges...

, one of Durham's collegiate bodies. There he was acclaimed "not only in the quality of his scholarship but also in his services to the Society". He stepped down at Easter 1952. His portrait, by Thomas William Pattison (1894-1983) hangs in the college hall of St Cuthbert’s in Durham.
In 1964 he succeeded A. S. P. Woodhouse as chairman of the Department of English at University College

University College

University College can refer to several institutions:- Canada :* University College, University of Toronto* University College of the North, The Pas, Manitoba* Booth University College, Winnipeg, Manitoba...

 at the University of Toronto. In 1971 he gave up being general editor of the Revels Plays, a series he had conceived in the mid-1950s in imitation of the New Arden Shakespeare, applying that edition's methods of scholarship to other English plays before 1700. Leech turned over the Revels Plays to F. David Hoeniger.

Publications

Leech's earliest published works were many essays and articles for scholarly periodicals. Later, he edited his own and others' essays into published collections.

• Shakespeare's Tragedies, and Other Studies in Seventeenth Century Drama (1950)
• "Webster as a Dramatic Poet" (essay), in John Webster: A Critical Study (1951)
• John Ford and the Drama of His Time (1957)
• "History for the Elizabethans" (essay), in Shakespeare: A Chronicle (1962)
• The John Fletcher Plays (1962)
• John Ford (1963)
• O'Neill (1963)
• Webster: The Duchess of Malfi (1963)
• "When writing becomes absurd" and "The acting of Shakespeare and Marlowe": two addresses (1964)
• "Shakespeare's Greeks" (essay), in Stratford Papers on Shakespeare, edited by B. W. Jackson (1964)
• Marlowe: A Collection of Critical Essays (1964)
• Shakespeare: The Tragedies: a Collection of Critical Essays, ed. by C. Leech (1965)
• Essays on Marlowe, ed. by C. Leech (1965)
• Tragedy (1969)
• The Dramatist's Experience, with other essays in literary theory (1970)
• "On Editing One's First Play" (article), Studies in Bibliography (1970)
• The Revels History of Drama in English (with T. W. Craik; 1975)
• Christopher Marlowe: Poet for the Stage, ed. by Anne Lancashire (1986)
• "The Moral Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet" (essay), Critical Essays on Romeo and Juliet, ed. Joseph A. Porter (1997)

Leech also contributed essays to numerous volumes of Shakespeare Survey, including volumes one, three, six, seven, eight, nine, eleven, twelve, and twenty-six. His contributions deal with the meaning of Measure for Measure, with Shakespeare's style and language, the playwright himself, the comedies, and Hamlet

Hamlet

The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...

.