This Is Shakespeare

By: Emma Smith

Narrated by: Emma Smith

Length: 9 hrs and 54 mins

Publisher's summary

An electrifying new study that investigates the challenges of the Bard's inconsistencies and flaws, and focuses on revealing - not resolving - the ambiguities of the plays and their changing topicality

A genius and prophet whose timeless works encapsulate the human condition like no other. A writer who surpassed his contemporaries in vision, originality, and literary mastery. A man who wrote like an angel, putting it all so much better than anyone else. Is this Shakespeare? Well, sort of. But it doesn't tell us the whole truth. So much of what we say about Shakespeare is either not true, or just not relevant.

In This Is Shakespeare, Emma Smith - an intellectually, theatrically, and ethically exciting writer - takes us into a world of politicking and copycatting, as we watch Shakespeare emulating the blockbusters of Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Kyd (the Spielberg and Tarantino of their day), flirting with and skirting around the cutthroat issues of succession politics, religious upheaval, and technological change. Smith writes in strikingly modern ways about individual agency, privacy, politics, celebrity, and sex. Instead of offering the answers, the Shakespeare she reveals poses awkward questions, always inviting the reader to ponder ambiguities.

©2020 Emma Smith (P)2020 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

"I admire the freshness and attack of her writing, the passion and curiosity that light up the page." (Hilary Mantel, author of Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies)

"If I were asked to recommend one guide for readers keen on discovering what's at stake in Shakespeare's plays, This Is Shakespeare would be it." (James Shapiro, author of The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606)

"Brilliantly illuminating.... The best introduction to Shakespeare’s plays that I've read, perhaps the best book on Shakespeare, full stop. Emma Smith's voice is disarmingly frank, refreshingly irreverent, full of pop culture.... Her reading of the plays is dazzling, her original research totally convincing." (Alex Preston, The Observer, London)

A pentimento approach

Challenging, entertaining, revelatory, there author first dazzled us with a dazzling review of the opus, including hundreds of ideas and thoughts that never visited my limited gray matter; then, explicitly, she invites us to do what she has been doing all along, muddle through the place as best we can to challenge, not only ourselves, but the works. It isn’t so much that she says they are living, breathing things, but that they can be read under a multitude of influences that bend and reflect their meaning in such a way that we will find ourselves and our current situation at least touched on in the texts. She is a marvelous combination of writer, professor, comic, And mentor. Should you read this book, you will find matter you have not encountered before. If it strikes you, as it did me, you will find it, intriguing and delightful.

Excellent and accessible listen

Really nice collection of essentially stand-alone essays on many Shakespeare plays. Accessible and insightful. Geared towards an intellectually curious general audience, but refreshing for the more specialized reader as well.