About the talk

Theatre was the new media of Elizabethan London. This talk discusses the industry via its entrepreneurs – playhouse owners, actors, writers, and publishers. We can trace how these innovators developed the new industry commercially and artistically. This includes issues of early modern branding, advertising, intellectual property, customer loyalty and product differentiation.

Seeing how business imperatives overlap with artistic ones (and occasionally pull in different directions) gives a different, more material angle on the development of Shakespeare – as playwright and as commodity.

About the event

Registration will open at 12pm with lunch served from 12 to 12.15pm.

About the speaker

Emma Smith is Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Hertford College, Oxford.

She has written widely on Shakespeare and early modern drama. Her book Shakespeare’s First Folio: Four Centuries of an Iconic Book was published in paperback by Oxford University Press in March 2018; next year she will publish an introduction to Shakespeare in the Pelican series for Penguin Books.