Experiencing Shakespeare's Theatres

In this transformative study, Simon Smith explores how playwrights like Shakespeare crafted their plays for demanding and varied commercial audiences. Rediscovering the many forms of judgement practised in the early modern playhouse, he investigates influences ranging from the classical tradition and grammar-school classroom to ballad and jest culture. Where many prior studies have treated 'the judicious' as a self-contained subset of playgoers, Smith reveals the variety of careful assessments made in the theatre by a wide range of playgoers, showing that judgement and pleasure were often simultaneous elements of the same response. Chapters examine specific parts of plays that were especially subject to evaluation and generative of enjoyment: spectacle, words, plot, and actorly technique. Close readings shed fresh light on much-studied plays such as Hamlet and Volpone, as well as exploring several unfairly overlooked plays.

Simon Smith is Associate Professor of Shakespeare and Early Modern Drama at the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, as well as a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London and a member of the Malone Society Council. He has acted as a historical consultant to the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), the BBC, Shakespeare's Globe, and Edward's Boys. His monograph Musical Response in the Early Modern Playhouse, 1603–1625 (Cambridge University Press, 2017) won the Shakespeare's Globe Book Award 2018 and University English Book Prize 2018.