Warren J. MacIsaac, Humanities Professor

Warren Jordan MacIsaac, a humanities and drama professor who was an expert on Shakespeare and modern European drama, died at home in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 14. He was 86 and had emphysema. 

A summer resident of East Hampton, Mr. MacIsaac dedicated his life’s work, his family said, to literature, history, drama, and professional theater. Before his retirement in 1995, he spent 25 years teaching at Catholic University of America in Washington, where he worked with a number of influential figures in 20th-century theater and on productions at the university’s Hartke Theater. 

“He was a man of words . . . an avid reader, writer, and poet, a true intellectual,” said his son Thomas MacIsaac of Bethesda, Md. 

From 1980 to 1985, Mr. MacIsaac was also the dramaturge at Center Stage in Baltimore, an early leader in regional theater innovation, where he helped to discover new actors such as Samuel L. Jackson and Boyd Gaines and sponsored playwrights including John Pielmeier and Eric Overmyer. 

Mr. MacIsaac’s literary interests were diverse. He wrote an undergraduate thesis on Shakespeare and a doctoral dissertation on Graham Greene, and was a fan of the work of James Agee. 

He was regularly published in literary and scholarly journals such as Shakespeare Quarterly and wrote playbill articles placing dramatic works into historical and social contexts for many of the major Washington, D.C., theaters. 

For the National Endowment for the Arts, for which he was a fellow, and for the New York State Council on the Arts, he did evaluations of theater programs that had applied for grants.

Born on Dec. 31, 1929, in Worcester, Mass., the son of Angus J. MacIsaac and the former Helen J. Jordan, he grew up in Cambridge, Mass., and attended Cambridge High and Latin. 

After a year in the Air Force, he entered Harvard College, where he earned the Boylston Prize for public speaking and graduated summa cum laude in 1954. He earned a master’s degree in 1962 and a Ph.D. in English in 1964 from Harvard University. 

Before taking his university post, Mr. MacIsaac served as the headmaster at the American School in Lugano, Switzerland, and as a teacher at Brooks School in North Andover, Mass., and Phillips Academy Andover, also in Massachusetts. 

From 1962 until 1969, he was a professor in the humanities department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he met his lifelong friend, the playwright A.R. Gurney, who taught literature at M.I.T. and helped foster Mr. MacIsaac’s love of the theater.

As a political activist for peace, Mr. MacIsaac led campaign efforts in Scituate, Mass., for Eugene McCarthy in his bid for president. 

Mr. MacIsaac met his future wife, Grace Collins, at the Widener Library at Harvard. They married in 1958 and lived in the Boston area before moving to, D.C. An English literature teacher and Trinity College administrator, she died in 2000. 

The couple first came to East Hampton in 1990 to visit their daughter Helen MacIsaac and her husband, Eric Kuhn, an editor at The Star. The MacIsaacs went on to buy a house in Barnes Landing, where they spent summers. 

Mr. MacIsaac is survived by his four children. In addition to Thomas MacIsaac and Helen MacIsaac, who lives in Washington, they are Joseph MacIsaac and Dr. Laura MacIsaac, both of New York City. Seven grandchildren also survive. 

A private service will be held in Washington this month. Memorial donations have been suggested to the Shakespeare Society and can be made online at shakespearesociety.org.