Emma Smith (scholar)

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Professor
Emma Smith
Born
Emma Josephine Smith

(1970-05-15) 15 May 1970 (age 54)
Leeds, West Yorkshire, England
NationalityEnglish
Occupation(s)Historian and academic
TitleProfessor of Shakespeare Studies
Board member of Royal Shakespeare Company
Academic background
Education Abbey Grange School
Alma mater Somerville College, Oxford
Thesis Sifting strangers: some aspects of the representation of the European foreigner in the English drama, 1580-1617 (1997)
Institutions All Souls College, Oxford
New Hall, Cambridge
Hertford College, Oxford
Notable worksPortable Magic: A History of Books and their Readers

Emma Josephine Smith (born 15 May 1970) [1] is an English literary scholar and academic whose research focuses on early modern drama, particularly William Shakespeare, and the history of the book. She has been a Tutorial Fellow in English at Hertford College, Oxford since 1997 and Professor of Shakespeare Studies at the University of Oxford since 2015.

Contents

She has published and lectured widely on Shakespeare and on other early modern dramatists, and worked with numerous theatre companies. Her lectures are available as podcasts Not Shakespeare: Elizabethan and Jacobean Popular Theatre [2] and Approaching Shakespeare. [3]

Life and career

Born and raised in Leeds, Smith was educated at Abbey Grange school and did her undergraduate degree at Somerville College, Oxford, from 1988 to 1991. [4] In an interview with the Oxford Review of Books, Smith said that she "didn't go to a school or come from a family where people particularly did go to Oxford" but that she also was not "from a terribly deprived background". [5] She was a Prize Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford and completed her doctorate in 1997 during her fellowship at the college. [6] Smith has credited the Prize Fellowship as helping her become an academic but said she found the time "isolating" and "felt the miss of having a graduate cohort". [5] She joined Hertford College as Tutorial Fellow in English in 1997, having previously held a junior academic position at New Hall, Cambridge. [7] In November 2015 she was awarded the Title of Distinction of Professor of Shakespeare Studies by the University of Oxford. [8]

As part of her work on Shakespeare's First Folio, Smith worked with conservators, digital specialists and crowd-sourced funding on a Bodleian Library project to digitise a copy of the book. [9] In 2016, she authenticated a new copy of the First Folio found at Mount Stuart House on the Isle of Bute. [10]

With Laurie Maguire of Oxford University she published a new argument in 2012 that Shakespeare's play All's Well that Ends Well was a collaboration with Thomas Middleton. The New Oxford Shakespeare edition of 2016, edited by Bourus et al., was the first printed edition of the play to accept this joint attribution. [11] Another article with Laurie Maguire won the 2014 Hoffman Prize. [12] She was a script advisor to Josie Rourke's 2018 film Mary Queen of Scots and the BBC’s 2023 documentary series Shakespeare: The Rise of a Genius. She edits the Cambridge University Press journal Shakespeare Survey.

Smith published This Is Shakespeare in 2019. The book was published as a guide to Shakespeare's plays. It extends from her lectures for Oxford undergraduates, which were also used as the basis for her Approaching Shakespeare podcast, where she discusses 20 of Shakespeare's plays in chronological order. She says she wanted the book "to give a sense of Shakespeare's range across his career" but also "to keep the individual chapters self-contained, so that you could read one before going to the theatre." [13] This is Shakespeare was well-received and "catapulted [Smith's] name into literary renown"; Smith said the response was "exciting and unexpected". [5]

She was shortlisted for the 2023 Wolfson History Prize for Portable Magic, [14] which she described as "a book about books, rather than words". [5] In 2024 she was made an Honorary Bencher at Middle Temple and included in Ribbons, a public sculpture in Leeds celebrating inspirational women. In September 2024 Smith joined the board of the Royal Shakespeare Company, having been named an Associate Scholar of the RSC in 2021. [15]

Bibliography

Selected publications

Related Research Articles

<i>Hamlet</i> Tragedy by William Shakespeare

The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, often shortened to Hamlet, is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play. Set in Denmark, the play depicts Prince Hamlet and his attempts to exact revenge against his uncle, Claudius, who has murdered Hamlet's father in order to seize his throne and marry Hamlet's mother. Hamlet is considered among the "most powerful and influential tragedies in the English language", with a story capable of "seemingly endless retelling and adaptation by others". It is widely considered one of the greatest plays of all time. Three different early versions of the play are extant: the First Quarto ; the Second Quarto ; and the First Folio. Each version includes lines and passages missing from the others.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Shakespeare</span> English playwright and poet (1564–1616)

William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon". His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. Shakespeare remains arguably the most influential writer in the English language, and his works continue to be studied and reinterpreted.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shakespearean tragedy</span> Tragedies written by William Shakespeare

Shakespearean tragedy is the designation given to most tragedies written by playwright William Shakespeare. Many of his history plays share the qualifiers of a Shakespearean tragedy, but because they are based on real figures throughout the history of England, they were classified as "histories" in the First Folio. The Roman tragedies—Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus—are also based on historical figures, but because their sources were foreign and ancient, they are almost always classified as tragedies rather than histories. Shakespeare's romances were written late in his career and published originally as either tragedy or comedy. They share some elements of tragedy, insofar as they feature a high-status central character, but they end happily like Shakespearean comedies. Almost three centuries after Shakespeare's death, the scholar F. S. Boas also coined a fifth category, the "problem play," for plays that do not fit neatly into a single classification because of their subject matter, setting, or ending. Scholars continue to disagree on how to categorize some Shakespearean plays.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas Middleton</span> English playwright and poet (1580–1627)

Thomas Middleton was an English Jacobean playwright and poet. He, with John Fletcher and Ben Jonson, was among the most successful and prolific of playwrights at work in the Jacobean period, and among the few to gain equal success in comedy and tragedy. He was also a prolific writer of masques and pageants.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">First Folio</span> 1623 collection of William Shakespeares plays

Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies is a collection of plays by William Shakespeare, commonly referred to by modern scholars as the First Folio, published in 1623, about seven years after Shakespeare's death. It is considered one of the most influential books ever published.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Revenge play</span>

The revenge tragedy, or revenge play, is a dramatic genre in which the protagonist seeks revenge for an imagined or actual injury. The term revenge tragedy was first introduced in 1900 by A. H. Thorndike to label a class of plays written in the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean eras.

Revenge tragedy is a theatrical genre, in which the principal theme is revenge and revenge's fatal consequences. Formally established by American educator Ashley H. Thorndike in his 1902 article "The Relations of Hamlet to Contemporary Revenge Plays," a revenge tragedy documents the progress of the protagonist's revenge plot and often leads to the demise of both the murderers and the avenger himself.

<i>A Yorkshire Tragedy</i> 1608 play by Thomas Middleton

A Yorkshire Tragedy is an early Jacobean era stage play, a domestic tragedy printed in 1608. The play was originally assigned to William Shakespeare, though the modern critical consensus rejects this attribution, favouring Thomas Middleton.

<i>The Revengers Tragedy</i> English-language Jacobean revenge tragedy

The Revenger's Tragedy is an English-language Jacobean revenge tragedy which was performed in 1606, and published in 1607 by George Eld. It was long attributed to Cyril Tourneur, but "The consensus candidate for authorship of The Revenger’s Tragedy at present is Thomas Middleton, although this is a knotty issue that is far from settled."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Fletcher (playwright)</span> English playwright (1579–1625)

John Fletcher was an English playwright. Following William Shakespeare as house playwright for the King's Men, he was among the most prolific and influential dramatists of his day; during his lifetime and in the Stuart Restoration, his fame rivalled Shakespeare's. Fletcher collaborated in writing plays, chiefly with Francis Beaumont or Philip Massinger, but also with Shakespeare and others.

<i>The Spanish Tragedy</i> Play by Thomas Kyd

The Spanish Tragedy, or Hieronimo is Mad Again is an Elizabethan tragedy written by Thomas Kyd between 1582 and 1592. Highly popular and influential in its time, The Spanish Tragedy established a new genre in English theatre: the revenge play or revenge tragedy. The play contains several violent murders and personifies Revenge as its own character. The Spanish Tragedy is often considered to be the first mature Elizabethan drama, a claim disputed with Christopher Marlowe's Tamburlaine, and was parodied by many Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights, including Marlowe, William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elizabethan literature</span> Written work produced during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558-1603)

Elizabethan literature refers to bodies of work produced during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603), and is one of the most splendid ages of English literature. In addition to drama and the theatre, it saw a flowering of poetry, with new forms like the sonnet, the Spenserian stanza, and dramatic blank verse, as well as prose, including historical chronicles, pamphlets, and the first English novels. Major writers include William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, Richard Hooker, Ben Jonson, Philip Sidney and Thomas Kyd.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shakespeare's plays</span>

Shakespeare's plays are a canon of approximately 39 dramatic works written by the English poet, playwright, and actor William Shakespeare. The exact number of plays as well as their classifications as tragedy, history, comedy, or otherwise is a matter of scholarly debate. Shakespeare's plays are widely regarded as among the greatest in the English language and are continually performed around the world. The plays have been translated into every major living language.

<i>Mucedorus</i>

A Most pleasant Comedie of Mucedorus the Kings Sonne of Valentia, and Amadine the Kinges daughter of Aragon, commonly called Mucedorus, is an Elizabethan romantic comedy, first performed around 1590 and regularly revived until the Restoration. It was one of the most performed plays of its age, and 16 quarto editions were published between 1598 and 1668 making it the most widely printed play from the time. It was performed for both Queen Elizabeth and King James I. A revised and expanded version was published in 1610 with additional scenes.

The Woman's Prize, or the Tamer Tamed is a Jacobean comedy written by John Fletcher. It was first published in the first Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1647, though it was written several decades earlier. There is no doubt that the play is the work of Fletcher alone; his highly distinctive and characteristic pattern of linguistic preferences is continuous through the text.

Cupid's Revenge is a Jacobean tragedy written by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher. It was a popular success that influenced subsequent works by other authors.

The Atheist's Tragedy, or the Honest Man's Revenge is a Jacobean-era stage play, a tragedy written by Cyril Tourneur and first published in 1611. It is the only dramatic work recognised by the consensus of modern scholarship as the undisputed work of Tourneur, "one of the more shadowy figures of Renaissance drama."

Valentinian is a Jacobean stage play written by John Fletcher, a revenge tragedy based on the life of the Roman emperor Valentinian III, and originally published in the first Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1647. The play dramatizes the story of Valentinian, one of the last Roman emperors in the western Roman Empire and last ruler of the conjoined Valentinianic–Theodosian dynasty, as recorded by the Late Antique Greek historian Procopius. His assassin in the play is based on Petronius Maximus, Valentinian's short-reigning successor.

The Arden Shakespeare is a long-running series of scholarly editions of the works of William Shakespeare. It presents fully edited modern-spelling editions of the plays and poems, with lengthy introductions and full commentaries. There have been three distinct series of The Arden Shakespeare over the past century, with the third series commencing in 1995 and concluding in January 2020. The fourth series is scheduled to commence publication in 2026.

Katherine Dorothea Duncan-Jones, was an English literature and Shakespeare scholar and was also a Fellow of New Hall, Cambridge (1965–1966), and then Somerville College, Oxford (1966–2001). She was also Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford from 1998 to 2001. She was a scholar of Shakespeare and his contemporaries.

References

  1. ↑ "The Cambridge Introduction to Shakespeare (electronic resource) / Emma Smith". Browns Books. Retrieved 11 September 2024.
  2. ↑ Not Shakespeare: Elizabethan and Jacobean Popular Theatre podcasts
  3. ↑ Approaching Shakespeare podcasts
  4. ↑ "Shakespeare's First Folio: from London to the world - and Leeds!". Leeds Art and Humanities Research Institute. Retrieved 11 September 2024.
  5. 1 2 3 4 Samuel King (Winter 2022–23). "English the Obscure: Professor Emma Smith on All Souls and Shakespeare". Oxford Review of Books. 7 (1): 16.
  6. ↑ Who's Who 2020.
  7. ↑ "Professor Emma Smith". Hertford College, Oxford. Retrieved 11 September 2024.
  8. ↑ "Recognition of Distinction: Successful Applicants 2015", The University of Oxford Gazette, no. 510915, October 2015. Retrieved 20 November 2016.
  9. ↑ Digital facsimile of the Bodleian First Folio
  10. ↑ Coughlan, Sean (7 April 2016). "Shakespeare Folio 'astonishing' find". BBC News. Retrieved 16 September 2017.
  11. ↑ Pollack-Pelzner, Daniel (19 February 2017). "The Radical Argument of the New Oxford Shakespeare". The New Yorker. ISSN   0028-792X . Retrieved 16 September 2017.
  12. ↑ "Hoffman Prize Winners". The Marlowe Society. Retrieved 9 November 2021.
  13. ↑ "No Such Thing as a Stupid Question: On Emma Smith's "This is Shakespeare"". Cleveland Review of Books. Retrieved 21 December 2021.
  14. ↑ "Kochanski wins £50k Wolfson History Prize". Books+Publishing. 14 November 2023. Retrieved 20 November 2023.
  15. ↑ "Professor Emma Smith joins the RSC Board". Royal Shakespeare Company. Retrieved 11 September 2024.
  16. ↑ Smith, Emma (27 April 2023). Portable Magic.
  17. ↑ Alex Preston (6 May 2019). "This Is Shakespeare by Emma Smith review – the Bard without the baggage". The Observer. Retrieved 9 November 2021.
  18. ↑ Smith, Emma. Women on the Early Modern Stage: A Woman Killed with Kindness, The Tamer Tamed, The Duchess of Malfi, The Witch of Edmonton. Methuen Drama (2014) ISBN   9781408182338
  19. ↑ Sauer, Elizabeth (July 2014). "Andy Kesson and Emma Smith, eds. The Elizabethan Top Ten: Defining Print Popularity in Early Modern England. Material Readings in Early Modern Culture series". Journal of British Studies. 53 (3): 769–771. doi:10.1017/jbr.2014.58 . Retrieved 9 November 2021.
  20. ↑ Smith, Emma (2012). Five revenge tragedies. London: Penguin Books. ISBN   9780141192277.
  21. ↑ Smith, Emma (2012). The Cambridge Shakespeare guide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN   9780521195232.
  22. ↑ James Hirsh (July 2008). "Review". Journal of British Studies. 37 (3): 661–663. JSTOR   25482840.
  23. ↑ Smith, Emma (2007). Shakespeare's Comedies : a Guide to Criticism. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons. ISBN   9780470776919.
  24. ↑ Smith, Emma (2008). Shakespeare's Tragedies : a Guide to Criticism. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. ISBN   9780470776896.
  25. ↑ Smith, Emma (2007). Shakespeare's Histories : a Guide to Criticism. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons. ISBN   9780470776889.

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