Theater Professor Had Poetic Roots

11.05.2018

William Wordsworth and Richard Wordsworth

English thespian Richard Wordsworth was a visiting professor of theater at UTD in the late 1970s and a portion of the ’80s.

His last name may ring a bell — he was the great-great-grandson of 19th-century British Poet Laureate William Wordsworth (1770-1850), who along with other poets helped kick-start the Romantic movement in literature.

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
— An excerpt from “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” by William Wordsworth

William’s descendant was an actor of the stage and the silver screen. Among Richard Wordsworth’s career highlights was a small role in Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Man Who Knew Too Much.”

While at UTD, he helped put on numerous Shakespearean productions, including “Twelfth Night” and “Macbeth.”

–Paul Bottoni