LEBANON — For Dartmouth College professor and Shakespeare scholar Peter Saccio, lecturing was not just an obligation of teaching, it was an opportunity to perform.

“He was one of the few real theatrical scholars who also understood how to make the plays theatrical,” Dartmouth theater professor Peter Hackett, a former student of Saccio’s, said in an interview. He recalled how Saccio brought Shakespeare’s characters to life with his wit and bravado.

Saccio’s passion for Shakespeare, and his desire to inspire that passion in others, extended to every part of his life, from his hours in the classroom to his work with Northern Stage, the theater company in White River Junction.

After years of declining health, Saccio died on Aug. 19, 2024. He was 83.

Born in 1941, Saccio grew up in Bethlehem, Conn. with his parents, Churchill and Leonard Saccio, his sister, Mary Anne, and his brother, Edward. 

His fascination with Shakespeare began in childhood. When he was 11, for instance, his mother gave him a novel about the noblewoman Katherine Swynford that introduced him to the Plantagenets, the royal dynasty that played a central part in Shakespeare’s history plays.

The novel “addicted me to the Plantagenets for life,” Saccio wrote years later in his own book “Shakespeare’s English Kings: History, Chronicle, and Drama,” which endeavored to clarify the historical details that so often confound scholars and audiences alike.

“The book is so clear and so easy to understand,” Hackett said. “I still have my copy … and I’ve used it forever.”

After attending St Mark’s School, an Episcopal boarding school in Massachusetts, Saccio enrolled at Yale University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy. As a junior, he put together a program of four of Shakespeare’s courtship scenes that toured eight Connecticut high schools, the Valley News reported in 1996 in a preview of “Shakespeare, Saccio and Champagne,” a night of theater at Briggs Opera House.

While completing his doctorate in English at Princeton University, Saccio joined the Dartmouth faculty in 1966, where, for the next four decades, he taught classes on Shakespeare and modern British drama.

“His classes were always engaging and entertaining and exciting,” Hackett said.

A member of the Class of ’75, Hackett intended to follow a pre-med track at Dartmouth. Saccio was one of the few professors “who really turned me (on) to a life of theater,” he said. 

While witty and exuberant behind the podium, Saccio was also a harsh marker with high expectations for his students. In seminar classes, which comprised 20 or so students, Saccio made a point of meeting individually with students to go over their work. 

“He really wanted you to get your writing up to the next level,” Class of ’79 alum Sam Abel-Palmer said in a phone interview. 

Abel-Palmer remembers how Saccio critiqued the lofty tone of one of his essays. Now the executive director of Legal Services Vermont, a Burlington law firm, whenever Abel-Palmer sits down to write, the first question he asks is “‘can I simplify this?,’” he said. 

A gay man, Saccio was a fierce advocate for queer students and faculty on campus. He served as the faculty advisor for the college’s gay student group, and, in 1992, taught the English Department’s first course on gay literature. Saccio was also among faculty members in the ’90s who pushed the administration to recognize domestic partner benefits for queer faculty, said Abel-Palmer, who taught in Dartmouth’s Theater Department from 1990 to 1997.

Saccio’s love of Shakespeare was central to his work with Northern Stage. He was one of the theater’s first board members following its founding in 1997, a position he held for nine years. Over the years, he gave a number of lectures on Shakespeare and British drama, and served as an advisor for plays such as the company’s 2020 production of “King Lear.” 

He was also responsible for connecting current artistic director Carol Dunne, Hackett’s wife, with the theater’s founder, Brooke Wetzel Ciardelli, back in 2004. 

Dunne remembers how Saccio would often turn up to performances draped in a large cape and carrying a walking stick. “You would have thought we were the Royal Shakespeare Company,” Dunne said. 

As much as Saccio supported work at Northern Stage, just like in the classroom, he was quick to offer critique. 

Once, after opening night, he promptly informed Dunne that she should fire one of the actors. 

“He was very opinionated, because he’d seen everything,” Dunne said. 

Theater was also a part of Saccio’s religious life. A member of St Thomas Episcopal Church in Hanover for decades, he faithfully attended the Sunday 8 a.m. service, which included readings from a revised version of the 16th century Book of Common Prayer. 

“Peter was a very profoundly religious man, and I think that part of that was he just loved the language, in the same way that he loved the language of Shakespeare,” the church’s rector, Rev. Dr. Guy Collins, said in a phone interview. 

Collins suspects the theatrical nature of the Episcopal service appealed to Saccio, who often delivered the Sunday readings. 

“I can still kind of hear his voice reading scripture so clearly and beautifully and with such excellent elocution,” Collins said. 

Saccio would also let his wit shine through at church. Once, at a special event, he performed a monologue from “Beyond the Fringe,” the British satirical variety show, from behind the pulpit. 

“He just loved England,” said Collins, who is British. “He loved the culture, and he loved the funny words.” 

Apart from theater, Saccio’s other great love was his partner of more than three decades, James Steffensen.

A scholar himself, Steffensen joined Dartmouth’s Theater Department in 1980. 

The couple would host dinner parties at their home in Etna for their “formerly closeted” colleagues said Abel-Palmer, who was “pulled into the inner circle” when he joined the faculty.

Steffensen was “very much an Anglophile like Peter,” Abel-Palmer said. When he and his partner, Craig, held their commitment ceremony in 1994, Saccio and Steffensen performed Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116 about the constancy of true love. 

Following a five-month battle with esophageal cancer, Steffensen died in 1999 at age 69.

At Steffensen’s funeral, Saccio delivered a “thunderously angry eulogy” about how “God could be so cruel,” recalled his longtime friend and former student, Colin Partridge. 

“Peter never really got over losing him,” Abel-Palmer shared with DGALA, the Dartmouth LGBTQIA+ Alumni Association, after Saccio’s death in a statement on the group’s website.

Saccio’s health began to decline in the years following his retirement from Dartmouth in 2007.

In 2019, Saccio moved into The Woodlands, an independent living community in Lebanon overseen by Alice Peck Day Memorial Hospital, where he stayed until his death.

Saccio’s health continued to deteriorate in the coming years, and by 2024 “he really did not want to go on,” Partridge said.   

A couple months before his death, Saccio decided to give one last lecture. “It was his way of saying goodbye to his professional life, if you will,” Partridge said. 

With an audience of some 60 older adults and Partridge, who was visiting, seated at his side, Saccio delivered a talk not on Shakespeare’s larger-than-life kings, but on his ghosts.

“He gave a fantastic lecture but there were periods of complete silence for a couple of minutes,” Partridge said.

After about an hour, he became too fatigued to continue. For maybe the first time, his love of Shakespeare had outrun him.

Marion Umpleby can be reached at mumpleby@vnews.com or 603-727-3306.