Shakespeare's Globe awards Press book

Shakespeare’s Globe has announced that Musical Response in the Early Modern Playhouse, 1603-1625 by Simon Smith is the winner of its 2018 Book Award.

The Shakespeare’s Globe Book Award is given to a scholar for their first monograph which has made a significant contribution to the understanding of early modern plays and playhouses.

“Music will no longer be conceived as somehow a pleasant interlude within a play’s dramatic action,” panel judge Tom Healy said. “Simon’s rich examination has much to say about the way we attempt to understand the period’s performance and theatre. It is fitting that a study about music in plays attains such a happy concord of substance and style.”

The award will be presented on Tuesday, 18 September when Smith will deliver a public lecture in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse.

“I am truly delighted and honoured, especially given the other wonderful books on this year’s expanded shortlist,” Smith said. “The Book Award reflects two of the Globe’s most valuable activities: championing new research and engaging new audiences with the history of early modern theatre and drama. I shall look forward with pride to discussing Musical Response in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse in September.”

Two other Cambridge University Press titles, Shakespeare’s Two Playhouses: Repertory and Theatre Space at the Globe and the Blackfriars, 1599-1613, by Sarah Dustagheer and Shakespeare and Manuscript Drama: Canon, Collaboration and Text by James Purkis were also shortlisted for the prize this year.

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