Job: Professor of Shakespeare Studies and dramatist
Twitter @OldFortunatus
Introduction:
Professor Emma Smith is Professor of Shakespeare Studies at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow of Hertford College. She has published and lectured widely on Shakespeare and on other early modern dramatists, and worked with numerous theatre companies. She was script adviser on the 2018 Mary Queen of Scots film featuring Saoirse Ronan and Margot Robbie
Current book?
It’s the summer vacation so I have several books on the go. For complete greedy pleasure, Val McDermid’s 1979 – a brilliant evocation of the smoky, blokey newsroom. For savouring more slowly, the Scottish nature writing collected by Kathleen Jamie as Antlers of Water: I’ve just read a wonderful, unexpected piece about watching wasps. And for tussling with, the final volume of Foucault’s History of Sexuality translated by Robert Hurley. I am fascinated to return to this sequence that I first read as an undergraduate.
Favourite book?
1066 and all That, by Sellars and Yeatman. Always makes me laugh.
Which two characters would you invite to dinner and why?
Shakespeare’s Ophelia (Hamlet) wants feeding up, and some female company in solidarity. Beatrice (Much Ado about Nothing) would be good on that, and we could have a Bechdel Test evening together.
How do you relax?
Walking our springer spaniel.
What book do you wish you had written and why?
I wish I’d finished the book I am writing...it’s been a long haul working on it during lockdown.
What would you say to your younger self if you were just starting out as a writer?
It’s going to be ok, and you don’t need to do it on a prodigy timetable.
Your two favourite books on Oxford?
An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears – a fantastic historical novel that really stays with you - and Real Oxford by Patrick McGuinness, an affectionate look behind the postcard Oxford, with particular emphasis on the towpaths and suburbs that are as much part of my Oxford as the Radcliffe Camera.
This is Shakespeare by Emma Smith (Pelican)
A genius and prophet whose timeless works encapsulate the human condition like no others. A writer who surpassed his contemporaries in vision, originality and literary mastery. Who wrote like an angel, putting it all so much better than anyone else. Is this Shakespeare? Well, sort of. But it doesn't really tell us the whole truth. So much of what we say about Shakespeare is either not true, or just not relevant, deflecting us from investigating the challenges of his inconsistencies and flaws. This electrifying new book thrives on revealing, not resolving, the ambiguities of Shakespeare's plays and their changing topicality. It introduces an intellectually, theatrically and ethically exciting writer who engages with intersectionality as much as with Ovid, with economics as much as poetry: who writes in strikingly modern ways about individual agency, privacy, politics, celebrity and sex. It takes us into a world of politicking and copy-catting, as we watch him emulating the blockbusters of Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Kyd, the Spielberg and Tarantino of their day; flirting with and skirting round the cut-throat issues of succession politics, religious upheaval and technological change. The Shakespeare in this book poses awkward questions rather than offering bland answers, always implicating us in working out what it might mean. This Is Shakespeare. And he needs your attention.
Information about 2021 St Hilda's Crime Fiction Weekend can be found here.
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