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.

• Introduction; 1. Playgoing, pleasure and judgement; 2. Spectacle; 3. Words; 4. Plot; 5. Action; Coda: all together in the 'dark house'; Select bibliography.

'Smith offers a wonderfully insightful introduction to both the mechanics and the aesthetics of performing in the early modern playhouses. Grounded in both contemporary evidence and scholarship in fields as various as spectatorship, affect, and early modern theories of judgement, Experiencing Shakespeare's Theatres is a significant intervention in the field.' Greg Walker, Regius Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature, The University of Edinburgh