Professor Emma Smith delivers Shakespeare’s Birthday Lecture in Washington DC

24 April 2026

What would happen if we understood the journeys in Shakespeare’s plays less as remnants from medieval romance and more in the light of exile, prejudice, and forced migration?

Hertford’s Emma Smith was the featured speaker at the Folger Institute’s annual Shakespeare’s Birthday Lecture, a prestigious tradition dating back to 1932 in which every year, in commemoration of William Shakespeare’s birthday, the Folger invites a scholar to speak about Shakespeare and early modern life. Held on 18 April in Washington DC, the event followed a day of celebrations, including sword-fighting, making ruffs and decorating Shakespeare cupcakes!

Books as migrants

Professor Smith’s lecture, ‘Shakespeare and Immigration’, explored the movement of people and texts across borders, offering a fresh perspective on Shakespeare’s works through the lens of migration, identity and belonging. She began by reflecting on the origins of the Folger Shakespeare Library itself. Henry Folger, who endowed the library with his own book collection, acquired all his rare editions from England, and these were transported across the Atlantic in the period from 1890 to 1920 on the same ships that brought migrants from the Old World to the New.

The ‘good immigrant’

Professor Smith then examined the concept of the ‘good immigrant’ – the idea that to be accepted the incomer has to be better: run faster, bake better cakes, be a more brilliant scientist. Shifting attention away from the migrant and towards the responsibilities of the host society, and drawing on the Tudor obligation of hospitality, she argued for a more reciprocal understanding of migration; one that emphasises welcome and inclusion.

Shakespeare and the ethics of welcome

These themes were then applied to Shakespeare’s works: to Twelfth Night, to The Book of Sir Thomas More (to which Shakespeare contributed a speech in his own hand), and to Othello, all of which explore the responsibilities of the host community to outsiders. Professor Smith pointed to Othello and Thomas More as examples of communities that fail to uphold these responsibilities. In Twelfth Night, however, the community succeeds in welcoming the displaced siblings Viola and Sebastian.

A recording of the lecture is available to watch here.

 

Emma Smith is Professor of Shakespeare Studies and Fellow Librarian & Archivist at Hertford College. Her research focuses on the reception of Shakespeare’s works in the theatre, in print, and in criticism – and especially on why we are so invested in particular stories about his life and canon. Her books include Shakespeare’s First Folio: Four Centuries of an Iconic Book (2016), This Is Shakespeare (2019), and the new Arden edition of Twelfth Night (forthcoming in 2026).

She is Associate Scholar and Trustee at the Royal Shakespeare Company, and was the 2023 Sam Wanamaker Fellow at Shakespeare’s Globe. She is currently at work on a Shakespeare graphic novel and completing a book on whether England had a renaissance in the sixteenth century.  She has recently been awarded a three-year fellowship to research connections between books, slavery, and forms of value.