Professor Emma Smith
Tutorial Fellow in English & Fellow Librarian and Archivist
Professor of Shakespeare Studies
I have been a Fellow of Hertford and Lecturer in the Faculty of English since 1997. Before that I was at Somerville and All Souls, Oxford and at New Hall (now Murray Edwards), Cambridge.
Undergraduate teaching
I teach part of the first year paper ‘Introduction to Literary Studies’, the Renaissance paper to second years, and Shakespeare. I lecture in the English Faculty on these topics – some of my lectures are available as free podcasts from iTunesU.
Graduate teaching
I teach on the English Faculty MSt course 1550-1700, and supervise research students on early modern topics.
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Research interests
My research focuses on Shakespeare, on early modern drama, and on book history. I am particularly interested in Shakespeare’s reception in print, performance, and criticism, and in the long histories of why and how we have engaged with these works.
My research combines academic publication with work for a general audience. Recent specialist work includes my ongoing collaboration with Laurie Maguire on collaborative playwrighting in the early modern period. My edition of Twelfth Night will be published in 2026 as part of the new Fourth Arden series. I am currently editing Thomas Nashe’s plague play Summer’s Last Will and Testament (for the Oxford Nashe Project). From October 2026 to September 2029 I will be undertaking Leverhulme Trust-funded research on a project called Imperial Bibliography: Books, Race and Value.
For a wider audience I have published Portable Magic: A History of Books and their Readers, shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize in 2023, and This Is Shakespeare: How to Read the World’s Greatest Playwright. My book The First Elizabethans: England’s Sixteenth Century Renaissance, will be published in late 2026. I often give talks to literary societies and festivals, theatre audiences and other groups, and write pieces for theatre programmes and the press. I’ve done some radio broadcasting, including the series Taking Issue With Shakespeare (BBC R4, April 2023), and appearances on In Our Time and Start the Week. I was the literary consultant for the BBC’s Shakespeare: Rise of a Genius documentary (2023), and got my first film credit as an advisor on Josie Rourke’s Mary Queen of Scots.
I am also interested in early modern plays in performance, and have acted as consultant, dramaturge or reviewer for a number of recent productions at the Royal Shakespeare Company, National Theatre, Almeida, and Donmar Warehouse. I am an Associate Scholar and Trustee at the RSC, and in 2023 was the Sam Wanamaker Fellow at Shakespeare’s Globe.
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Related websites