No Such Thing as a Stupid Question: On Emma Smith’s "This is Shakespeare"

Emma Smith | This is Shakespeare | Pantheon | 2019 | 337 Pages

Is Hamlet a pretentious college kid with too much time on his hands or a tragic hero caught in a philosopher’s dilemma? Is the wizened Prospero in The Tempest a surrogate for the playwright himself? Who really wrote Shakespeare’s plays? The inherent dramatic “gappiness” of Shakespeare’s works leaves us with more questions than answers, argues Emma Smith in her 2019 essay collection This is Shakespeare, a swift but insightful guide to Shakespeare’s plays. But the sievelike nature of the plays actually works in our favor. By engaging with these questions, or gaps, as Smith refers to them, we (re)create the plays—and their author—in our own image and prove their elasticity, says Smith. Extending from her lecture series for Oxford undergraduates—and available online as the Approaching Shakespeare podcast—she discusses 20 of Shakespeare’s plays in chronological order. She says that she wanted “to give a sense of Shakespeare’s range across his career” but also “to keep the individual chapters self-contained, so that you could read one before going to the theatre.”  While the book is far from exhaustive—Shakespeare is generally credited with authoring at least 38 plays, 154 sonnets, and two epic poems—Smith’s selection covers the most popular comedies, tragedies, and histories. Drawing upon a vast range of knowledge, she whisks together a subtle yet compelling melee of evidence—everything from historical context about the Early Modern era to poignant commentary on how Shakespeare adapted his source material, from adept critical analysis of dramatic structure and language to helpful pop culture parallels—which, like a fine soufflé, requires the highest level of skill from its chef, yet crosses the palette as airy and effortless.

This is Shakespeare follows in the footsteps of Marjorie Garber’s Shakespeare After All (2004) and Harold Bloom’s The Invention of the Human (1998), which also discuss the plays sequentially. However, Garber’s nearly 1,000 pages and Bloom’s 715 loom intimidatingly over Smith’s 324. Packaged in an eye-catching red jacket with a decoupaged Shakespeare on its cover, Smith’s bright volume seems more inviting. In her introduction, Smith explains that she “wanted to write something for readers, theatregoers, students and all those who feel they missed out on Shakespeare at some earlier point and are willing to have another pop at those extraordinary works.” She provides brief plot summaries (though in later chapters she assumes that the reader has at least a big-picture familiarity with the story), making This is Shakespeare ideal for anyone who suffered through a less than favorable introduction to the writer or who is interested in discovering the plays afresh. Flipping through the pages, there is a sense of sitting across a cafe table from the Oxford professor, chatting Hamlet and plans for an upcoming holiday. Throughout the book, Smith’s tone is light, intelligent, and personable. She avoids unnecessary jargon, throws in conversational parentheticals, and explicates lesser-known terms (e.g. in Chapter 12 covering Twelfth Night: “Antonio’s language has connotations of eros rather than philia—useful Greek terms distinguishing between erotic love from deep friendship”). And she includes contemporary references to lend context to conceptual or historical constructions that may seem inaccessible for the modern-day reader (e.g. she compares Shakespeare writing his history cycle to George Lucas filming the Star Wars franchise in the chapter on Richard III).  

While each essay includes a brief yet apt overview of the major themes and analyses of the play, Smith excels in showcasing more inventive readings. For instance, in the chapter on A Midsummer Night’s Dream, she begins by citing history’s consensus that this fairtytale-esque romp is suitable for children. But Smith is quick to question this assumption. She navigates us through a version of the drama that supplants the traditional Victorian mythos, citing explicit allusions to bestiality and sexual experimentation as tentpoles of the play. In her examination of Julius Caesar, Smith avoids the usual dance of ethos, pathos, and logos surrounding the play’s most famous speeches. Instead, she focuses on the larger ways in which the characters craft their own versions of the story: “No sooner has the assassination of Caesar taken place than it is subject to narrative retelling.” In this play, facts mean little, and “what is important is what is believed.” Smith spends a good portion of the chapter on Cinna the Poet’s cameo. She suggests it highlights the complete “failure of language to effect action”—sound familiar? Given the surging political tumult and overdue civil unrest of 2020 and, now, 2021, anyone living through the Covid-19 pandemic need not retreat too far into the recesses of their memory to understand the chaotic nature of the world Shakespeare depicts in Caesar. 

Smith’s dexterous ability to swerve on a pin isn’t clear only within chapters; she also varies her approach from chapter to chapter. Thus, plays that may seem alike avoid redundancy. In the introduction, she says that one need not read the essays altogether, and that is true; however, there is something to be gained in reading the collection, well, collectively. Moving through the essays sequentially offers the reader a glimpse at the larger constellation of Shakespeare’s oeuvre. For instance, in the back-to-back chapters on Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra, Smith explores the turn from central figures whose inner psyches are accessible to the audience and towards the protagonists of the later play, who are more guarded and performative. In the chapters about the comedies, such as Much Ado, Smith notes the transition from a more traditional model that relies on an external blocking figure to the more modern device of internal, psychological obstacles. Eventually, the comedies take on more drastic changes, as in Measure for Measure and Winter’s Tale, to save  their characters from drastic ends.

So what, besides their author, unites these essays? What does the book offer, given that Smith’s lectures are already out in the world? As we move through This is Shakespeare, we realize that it’s not Smith’s intelligent readings that make this volume so compelling. Rather, it is her method of critical discourse that has us flying through the pages, eager for more. Much as Shakespeare may have employed Cinna the Poet to underline the necessity of effective communicators—and the explicit danger we all face in their absence—Smith deploys questions to emphasize the value of interrogation within and, more crucially, beyond Shakespeare. Questioning, which necessitates dialogue and is the basis of drama, forces us to engage with new ideas—or old ones in new ways, to stretch beyond the invisible fences of our minds, and to exercise empathy. In essence, to question is to grow, and it is this concept that Smith lobbies for in This is Shakespeare. 

The greatest compliment I can give Smith—and there are many—is that in suggesting that Shakespeare’s writing offers us more questions than answers, Smith proves that her own work provokes insightful queries from us. (E.g., Why bother reading another critique of Hamlet? And does any of this matter in a world wracked with infectious disease and social inequity? I, and I fervently believe Smith, would argue “yes.”) Even the open-ended nature of the book’s title prompts us to ask: “What is Shakespeare?”. Smith’s Shakespeare is no trickledown Bard-of-Avon, no fixed marble figure atop a lofty pedestal. We are encouraged to challenge him—his works and legacy—and therefore the word of any and all long-standing monoliths. That makes us collaborators in the process of creation; Shakespeare’s work becomes a platform for our ideas, rather than forcing us to adapt our ideas to it. So, yes, Smith offers convincing critiques of the works—which would most likely wow guests at a dinner party—but it is more the egalitarian act of inviting us to the table of inquiry that makes This is Shakespeare worth our time.