He earned A.B., M.A. and Ph.D. degrees at the University of Illinois, where he started in 1934 as an assistant instructor of English. He taught as a full professor of English from 1958 to 1979, when he reached emeritus status. Over the years, he had teaching engagements at Vassar College, the University of Colorado, the University of Tennessee and the State University College at Plattsburgh, N.Y.As the longtime director of the University Theater at Illinois, he presented more than 65 plays there and elsewhere in the country. He followed Elizabethan staging for Shakespeare's plays, using a copy of the Globe Theater in London. He also directed the works of modern writers, including Shaw, Brecht, Pirandello, Strindberg and Eliot.He was a co-founder and editor of Accent: A Quarterly of New Literature, which appeared in the 1940's and 50's. It provided an outlet for such promising authors as Eudora Welty, Katherine Anne Porter, E. E. Cummings, Marianne Moore, John Dos Passos and Dylan Thomas. "Access: An Anthology, 1940-1960," co-edited by him, was published by the University of Illinois Press in 1973.He was the author of "The Shakespeare Promptbooks: A Descriptive Catalogue" (University of Illinois Press, 1965) and the 11-volume "John Philip Kemble Promptbooks" (Folger Shakespeare Library, 1974)