Shakespeare on the Radio - by Andrea Smith

About the Book

Brings together Shakespearean performance, audio drama studies and media history to offer the first detailed examination of Shakespeare productions on British radio.

Book Synopsis

Taking you inside Shakespeare's plays on the radio - how they sound and how they change and evolve - Andrea Smith provides an innovative history of Shakespearean performance. Based on meticulous new research using documentary evidence and archive audio recordings, Smith explores what it means to present Shakespeare as audio and how this can help us to gain a greater understanding of the plays themselves and the art of performing them. The BBC's remit to 'inform, educate and entertain' has led to assumptions that these plays were presented as scholarly works rather than showbiz. Wrong! They feature all the careful crafting of any other production of Shakespeare's work. This book puts these audio productions on a par with other forms of Shakespearean performance and offers detailed case studies to further the readers' understanding of Shakespeare's texts on air.

Review Quotes

An indispensable guide to the huge (and largely free) treasures of our greatest writer. It's often said that radio plays have the best scenery; this book proves that they have the best words as well.--Samuel West, actor and director

Forget the old chestnut that if Shakespeare were alive now, he'd be writing for Hollywood: Andrea Smith makes clear that he'd be writing for the verbal, imaginative medium of radio. This revelatory book opens a fascinating new field of study.--Emma Smith, University of Oxford