Hallett Smith; Shakespearean, Elizabethan Scholar

Hallett Smith, 89, Shakespearean and Elizabethan scholar who taught at Caltech and aided the Huntington Library. Educated at the University of Colorado and Yale, Smith taught English at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., from 1931 to 1949. Leaving the East, he taught English and was dean of humanities and social sciences at Caltech until 1970. Smith then spent 20 years as senior research associate at the Huntington Library in San Marino. His research and writing throughout his career produced the definitive book “Elizabethan Poetry: A Study in Conventions, Meaning and Expression” and articles for the Norton Anthology of English Literature. In 1972 Smith published the book “Shakespeare’s Romances: A Study of Some Ways of the Imagination” and in 1981 “The Tension of the Lyre: Poetry in Shakespeare’s Sonnets.” On Aug. 15 in Duarte.