Sarah Carpenter

Sarah Carpenter is an academic specialising in English literature and was head of department at the University of Edinburgh from 2003 to 2006.

Carpenter gained a PhD from the University of Oxford researching allegory in Tudor drama. She is an editor of the journal Medieval English Theatre (MeTH), and a contributor to Records of Early English Drama (REED). She has published numerous articles on early theatre and masque, and performance at the English and Scottish royal courts.

Selected publications "The Theatre Scene I", in Randall Stevenson and Greg Walker, The Oxford Handbook of Scottish Theatre (Oxford, 2025). "The Places of Foolery: Robert Armin and fooling in Edinburgh", Medieval English Theatre, 37 (2015). "Laughter and Sin: Vice Families in Tudor Interludes", Theta XII, Théâtre Tudor (2016), pp. 15-38 "Laughing at Natural Fools", Theta XI, Théâtre Tudor (2013), pp. 3–22 "Gely with tharmys of Scotland and England: Word, Image and Performance at the Marriage of James IV and Margaret Tudor", in Fresche Fontanis (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2013), pp. 165–178. "Plays and Playcoats: A Courtly Interlude Tradition in Scotland?", Comparative Drama, 46:4 (Winter 2012), pp. 475–496. "Masking and politics: the Alison Craik incident, Edinburgh 1561", Renaissance Studies, 21:5 (November 2007), pp. 625–636. "To thexaltacyon of noblesse: A Herald's Account of the Marriage of Margaret Tudor to James IV", Medieval English Theatre 29 (2007). "Performing Diplomacies: The 1560s Court Entertainments of Mary Queen of Scots", Scottish Historical Review, 82:2 no. 214 (2003), pp. 194–225 with Meg Twycross, Masks and Masking in Medieval and Early Tudor England (Ashgate, 2002). "Women and Carnival Masking", Records of Early English Drama Newsletter, 21:2 (1996), pp. 9–16. "The Sixteenth-century Court Audience: Performers and Spectators", MeTH, 19 (1997), pp. 18–28. "Walter Binning: Theatrical and Decorative Painter", MeTH, 10 (1988), pp. 17–25. "Morality-Play Characters", Medieval English Theatre, 5:1 (1983), pp. 18–28.