Dr Emma Smith's research combines a range of approaches to Shakespeare and early modern drama. She is currently working on the First Folio (1623), a project combining aspects of the history of the book, histories of reading, and the interpretation of Shakespeare on the page. Her next project will be on the construction of character in printed drama. With Tamara Atkin at QMUL, she is working on the way cast lists in printed drama through the sixteenth and seventeenth century can inform our understanding of the experience of seeing, as well as reading, plays. She is part of a team of scholars revising the Riverside Shakespeare under the general editorship of Douglas Bruster. She is also interested in drama in performance, in the methodology of writing about theatre, in reviewing and its rhetoric, and in developing analogies between cinema, film theory, and early modern performance. She is working with Charlotte Brewer on a pilot project on the Oxford English Dictionary and Shakespeare, which they hope will develop into a website and associated publications on the issue of Shakespeare’s linguistic creativity and how it has been recorded. Pedagogy is important to her and she continues to work on readerly editions of early modern texts and on books, articles and lectures which disseminate research to the widest possible audience. A good example is her involvement in the 'Sprint for Shakespeare' project.
# | Title | Description | Contributor |
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1 | The Revenger's Tragedy: Thomas Middleton |
A blackly camp tragedy - Hamlet without the narcissism - set in a court corrupted by lust and... |
Emma Smith |
2 | The Comedy of Errors |
Lecture 12 in the Approaching Shakespeare series asks how seriously we can take the farcical... |
Emma Smith |
3 | The Duchess of Malfi: John Webster |
In dramatizing a woman's sexual choices in a notably sympathetic manner, this tragedy... |
Emma Smith |
4 | Twelfth Night |
The seventh Approaching Shakespeare lecture takes a minor character in Twelfth Night - Antonio... |
Emma Smith |
5 | Henry V |
The second lecture in the Approaching Shakespeare series looks at King Henry V, and asks whether... |
Emma Smith |
6 | Henry IV part 1 |
Like generations of theatre-goers, this lecture concentrates on the (large) figure of Sir John... |
Emma Smith |
7 | Richard II |
Lecture eight in the Approaching Shakespeare series asks the question that structures Richard II... |
Emma Smith |
8 | Antony and Cleopatra |
What kind of tragedy is this play, with its two central figures rather than a singular hero? The... |
Emma Smith |
9 | Measure for Measure |
The third Approaching Shakespeare lecture, on Measure for Measure, focuses on the vexed question... |
Emma Smith |
10 | King John |
At the heart of King John is the death of his rival Arthur: this fifteenth lecture in the... |
Emma Smith |
11 | Richard III |
In this thirteenth lecture in the Approaching Shakespeare series the focus is on the... |
Emma Smith |
12 | A Midsummer Night's Dream |
This lecture on A Midsummer Night's Dream uses modern and early modern understandings of... |
Emma Smith |
13 | 16.To Shakespeare and Beyond: a panel discussion. |
Cultural Connections discussion panel Casandra Ash, Peter Kirwan, Jose Perez Diaz and Emma Smith... |
Cassandra Ash, Peter Kirwan, José Pérez Díez, Emma Smith |
14 | Othello |
Othello - First in Emma Smith's Approaching Shakespeare lecture series; looking at the... |
Emma Smith |
15 | King Lear |
Showing how generations of critics - and Shakespeare himself - have rewritten the ending of King... |
Emma Smith |
16 | Titus Andronicus |
Focusing in detail on one particular scene, and on critical responses to it, this sixth... |
Emma Smith |
17 | Taming of the Shrew |
Emma Smith uses evidence of early reception and from more recent productions to discuss the... |
Emma Smith |
18 | The Shoemaker's Holiday: Thomas Dekker |
Like a Busby Berkeley depression-era musical, Dekker's comedy is a feel-good antidote to a... |
Emma Smith |
19 | The Bodleian Shakespeare: A treasure lost... and regained |
From the 2010 Alumni Weekend. Emma Smith reveals how Oxford University mobilised Alumni support... |
Emma Smith |
20 | The Merchant of Venice |
This lecture on The Merchant of Venice discusses the ways the play's personal relationships... |
Emma Smith |
21 | Arden of Faversham: Anon |
A true crime story of the murder of Thomas Arden by his wife and her lover, this play is... |
Emma Smith |
22 | The Roaring Girl: Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker |
Based on a contemporary scandal of a woman who dressed in male clothing, this play of topsy-... |
Emma Smith |
23 | Much Ado About Nothing |
Emma Smith asks why the characters are so quick to believe the self-proclaimed villain Don John... |
Emma Smith |
24 | The Winter's Tale |
How we can make sense of a play that veers from tragedy to comedy and stretches credulity in its... |
Emma Smith |
25 | The Spanish Tragedy: Thomas Kyd |
Popular tragedy in which Hieronimo pursues aristocratic murderers of his son Horatio and takes... |
Emma Smith |
26 | Macbeth |
In this fourth Approaching Shakespeare lecture the question is one of agency: who or what makes... |
Emma Smith |
27 | Hamlet |
The fact that father and son share the same name in Hamlet is used to investigate the play'... |
Emma Smith |
28 | The Tempest |
That the character of Prospero is a Shakespearean self-portrait is a common reading of The... |
Emma Smith |
29 | As You Like It |
Asking 'what happens in As You Like It', this lecture considers the play's... |
Emma Smith |
30 | Why should we study Shakespeare? |
Dr Emma Smith of Hertford College, Oxford, discusses her current research and proposes why we... |
Emma Smith, Ilana Lassman |
31 | Pericles, Prince of Tyre |
Pericles has been on the margins of the Shakespearean canon: this fourteenth lecture in the... |
Emma Smith |
# | Title | Description | Contributor |
---|---|---|---|
1 | 16.To Shakespeare and Beyond: a panel discussion. |
Cultural Connections discussion panel Casandra Ash, Peter Kirwan, Jose Perez Diaz and Emma Smith... |
Cassandra Ash, Peter Kirwan, José Pérez Díez, Emma Smith |
# | Essay Title | Description | Contributor |
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1 | William Shakespeare |
How William Shakespeare (... |
Emma Smith |
2 | Renaissance Theatre |
By Emma Smith |
Emma Smith |
3 | Shakespeare's Contemporary dramatists |
By Emma Smith |
Emma Smith |
4 | Early Modern Drama on the Page and Stage |
By Emma Smith |
Emma Smith |