Emma Smith

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Emma Smith teaches Shakespeare and early modern literature to undergraduates and graduates in Oxford. Her work is mainly on Shakespeare and Renaissance dramatists: most recently she has published 'The Cambridge Introduction to Shakespeare' (2007). She reviews and lectures widely, including for the 'Times Literary Supplement' and 'Shakespeare Survey', and at the Shakespeare Institute, the University of Pennsylvania, the Royal Shakespeare Company, and the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC.

Series featuring Emma Smith

Audio
Video

#		Episode Title	Description	Duration	People	Date
1	Creative Commons	The Merchant of Venice	This lecture on The Merchant of Venice discusses the ways the play's personal relationships are shaped by models of financial transaction, using the casket scenes as a central example.	0:43:34	Emma Smith	20 Nov 2012
2	Creative Commons	Taming of the Shrew	Emma Smith uses evidence of early reception and from more recent productions to discuss the question of whether Katherine is tamed at the end of the play.	0:43:57	Emma Smith	09 Nov 2012
3	Creative Commons	A Midsummer Night's Dream	This lecture on A Midsummer Night's Dream uses modern and early modern understandings of dreams to uncover a play less concerned with marriage and more with sexual desire.	0:40:37	Emma Smith	05 Nov 2012
4	Creative Commons	Much Ado About Nothing	Emma Smith asks why the characters are so quick to believe the self-proclaimed villain Don John, drawing on gender and performance criticism to think about male bonding, the genre of comedy, and the impulses of modern performance.	0:41:58	Emma Smith	30 Oct 2012
5	Creative Commons	Hamlet	The fact that father and son share the same name in Hamlet is used to investigate the play's nostalgia, drawing on biographical criticism and the religious and political history of early modern England.	0:46:08	Emma Smith	23 Oct 2012
6	Creative Commons	As You Like It	Asking 'what happens in As You Like It', this lecture considers the play's dramatic structure and its ambiguous use of pastoral, drawing on performance history, genre theory, and eco-critical approaches.	0:49:06	Emma Smith	23 Oct 2012
7	Creative Commons	King Lear	Showing how generations of critics - and Shakespeare himself - have rewritten the ending of King Lear, this sixteenth Approaching Shakespeare lecture engages with the question of tragedy and why it gives pleasure.	0:47:25	Emma Smith	22 Feb 2012
8	Creative Commons	King John	At the heart of King John is the death of his rival Arthur: this fifteenth lecture in the Approaching Shakespeare series looks at the ways history and legitimacy are complicated in this plotline.	0:45:11	Emma Smith	10 Feb 2012
9	Creative Commons	Pericles, Prince of Tyre	Pericles has been on the margins of the Shakespearean canon: this fourteenth lecture in the Approaching Shakespeare series shows some of its self-conscious artistry and contemporary popularity.	0:40:42	Emma Smith	01 Feb 2012
10	Creative Commons	Richard III	In this thirteenth lecture in the Approaching Shakespeare series the focus is on the inevitability of the ending of Richard III: does the play endorse Richmond's final victory?	0:45:09	Emma Smith	25 Jan 2012
11	Creative Commons	The Comedy of Errors	Lecture 12 in the Approaching Shakespeare series asks how seriously we can take the farcical exploits of Comedy of Errors, drawing out the play's serious concerns with identity and selfhood.	0:46:50	Emma Smith	23 Jan 2012
12	Creative Commons	Henry IV part 1	Like generations of theatre-goers, this lecture concentrates on the (large) figure of Sir John Falstaff and investigates his role in Henry IV part 1. Lecture 11 in the Approaching Shakespeare series.	0:50:35	Emma Smith	16 Nov 2011
13	Creative Commons	The Tempest	That the character of Prospero is a Shakespearean self-portrait is a common reading of The Tempest: this tenth Approaching Shakespeare lecture asks whether that is a useful reading of the play.	0:48:58	Emma Smith	14 Nov 2011
14	Creative Commons	Antony and Cleopatra	What kind of tragedy is this play, with its two central figures rather than a singular hero? The ninth lecture in the Approaching Shakespeare series tries to find out.	0:46:50	Emma Smith	10 Nov 2011
15	Creative Commons	Richard II	Lecture eight in the Approaching Shakespeare series asks the question that structures Richard II: does the play suggest Henry Bolingbroke's overthrow of the king was justified?	0:45:16	Emma Smith	01 Nov 2011
16	Creative Commons	Twelfth Night	The seventh Approaching Shakespeare lecture takes a minor character in Twelfth Night - Antonio - and uses his presence to open up questions of sexuality, desire and the nature of romantic comedy.	0:47:16	Emma Smith	20 Oct 2011
17	Creative Commons	Titus Andronicus	Focusing in detail on one particular scene, and on critical responses to it, this sixth Approaching Shakespeare lecture on Titus Andronicus deals with violence, rhetoric, and the nature of dramatic sensationalism.	0:49:44	Emma Smith	19 Oct 2011
18	Creative Commons	The Winter's Tale	How we can make sense of a play that veers from tragedy to comedy and stretches credulity in its conclusion? That's the topic for this fifth Approaching Shakespeare lecture on The Winter's Tale.	0:42:58	Emma Smith	09 Nov 2010
19	Creative Commons	Macbeth	In this fourth Approaching Shakespeare lecture the question is one of agency: who or what makes happen the things that happen in Macbeth?	0:46:00	Emma Smith	02 Nov 2010
20	Creative Commons	Measure for Measure	The third Approaching Shakespeare lecture, on Measure for Measure, focuses on the vexed question of this uncomic comedy's genre.	0:40:47	Emma Smith	26 Oct 2010
21	Creative Commons	Henry V	The second lecture in the Approaching Shakespeare series looks at King Henry V, and asks whether his presentation in the play is entirely positive.	0:46:13	Emma Smith	20 Oct 2010
22	Creative Commons	The Bodleian Shakespeare: A treasure lost... and regained	From the 2010 Alumni Weekend. Emma Smith reveals how Oxford University mobilised Alumni support to bring Shakespeare's First Folio back to the Bodleian library over 200 years after it was lost.	0:46:08	Emma Smith	19 Oct 2010
23	Creative Commons	Othello	Othello - First in Emma Smith's Approaching Shakespeare lecture series; looking at the central question of race and its significance in the play.	0:47:02	Emma Smith	18 Oct 2010
24	Creative Commons	The Duchess of Malfi: John Webster	In dramatizing a woman's sexual choices in a notably sympathetic manner, this tragedy articulates perennial questions about female autonomy and class distinction.	0:37:41	Emma Smith	24 Nov 2009
25	Creative Commons	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-turvy genders has fun with some very modern ideas about sexuality, identity and whether we are what we wear.	0:48:15	Emma Smith	13 Nov 2009
26	Creative Commons	The Revenger's Tragedy: Thomas Middleton	A blackly camp tragedy - Hamlet without the narcissism - set in a court corrupted by lust and self-interest, this play is both fascinated and repelled by its own depravity.	0:45:30	Emma Smith	06 Nov 2009
27	Creative Commons	The Shoemaker's Holiday: Thomas Dekker	Like a Busby Berkeley depression-era musical, Dekker's comedy is a feel-good antidote to a context of shortages, political malaise and general pessimism, but real life in the shape of war, class antagonism and civic tensions, always threatens to intrude.	0:45:33	Emma Smith	06 Nov 2009
28	Creative Commons	Arden of Faversham: Anon	A true crime story of the murder of Thomas Arden by his wife and her lover, this play is concerned with the politics of the household, with gender roles within marriage, and presents a black comedy of botched murder attempts rather like The Ladykillers.	0:41:38	Emma Smith	05 Nov 2009
29	Creative Commons	The Spanish Tragedy: Thomas Kyd	Popular tragedy in which Hieronimo pursues aristocratic murderers of his son Horatio and takes revenge. It speaks, like Hollywood Westerns, to questions about private revenge versus public justice, and to the vexed religious questions of its age.	0:49:05	Emma Smith	05 Nov 2009

#		Episode Title	Description	Duration	People	Date
1	Creative Commons	The Bodleian Shakespeare: A treasure lost... and regained	From the 2010 Alumni Weekend. Emma Smith reveals how Oxford University mobilised Alumni support to bring Shakespeare's First Folio back to the Bodleian library over 200 years after it was lost.	0:46:08	Emma Smith	19 Oct 2010
2		Dr. Emma Smith, Fellow in English, Hertford College	Dr. Emma Smith on the UNIQ Summer School programme at the University of Oxford.	0:01:36	Emma Smith	21 Jan 2010