Ashley Horace Thorndike

Ashley Horace Thorndike (1871 - April 17, 1933) was an American educator and expert on William Shakespeare. He was the son of a priest Edward R. Thorndike and brother Lynn Thorndike, an American historian of medieval science and alchemy, and Edward Lee Thorndike, known as the father of modern educational psychology. He taught at Columbia University and wrote several notable textbooks, including Shakespeare Facts, Tragedy, and English Comedy. He died of a heart attack in Manhattan when he went home after dinner at a club. He was the brother of the medieval historian Lynn Thorndike. He coined the term “tragedy of revenge” in 1900 to refer to the class of plays written at the end of the Elizabethan and early Jacobin eras.