James Harriman-Smith

Category: From my PhD

  • La Haine de Shakespeare

    There’s  a conference this December entitled ‘La haine de Shakespeare’, part of a larger research project at the Sorbonne on ‘La haine du théâtre’. After going to one of their colloques, I really wanted to take part myself, and was glad of what seemed like an ideal opportunity.

  • Shakespeare and Outreach

    It’s been a while since I did a real post on this blog (January‘s doesn’t count). And I’m afraid it’s going to be a little longer yet until I do again. This is because I have begun writing up the thesis, and I’m finding it hard to switch between blog-mode and full-blown PhD chapter-writing mode.

  • 2014: Looking Forward and Back

    This is a little late for New Year navel-gazing, but I thought I’d write a short recap of my blogging last year. It seemed like a good way to pass the time until my book emerged from the depths of the British Library.

  • Monsters

    This post is so far out of the Christmas spirit that I’ve decided to put this warning at the head of it. Apologies. Continue only if you’re feeling Scroogish. Continuing my sideline of reading whatever roughly contemporary anecdotal accounts of acting and performance I find in secondhand bookshops (e.g. Sher’s, and Brook’s), I’ve just finished…

  • Some more about Saint Omer

    In late November 2014, a First Folio was discovered in the Bibliothèque d’Agglomeration Saint-Omer. I realise I’m a bit late to the party with a blog post on this extremely rare qnd exciting event, but, still,I hope what I have to say here about another of Saint-Omer’s Shakespearean connections remains of interest.

  • Johnson and Shakespeare

    Just a quick post this time to announce the I’ve been invited to speak at a conference in Pembroke College, Oxford, marking the 350th anniversary of Samuel Johnson’s edition of the plays of Shakespeare. The event will take place in August 2015, so – all being well – I should have finished writing my thesis…

  • Curating Letourneur

    This is a bibliographical post. In the following table, I’m going to list the rough contents of all twenty volumes of Pierre Letourneur’s translation of Shakespeare into French. I am also going to provide a link to the digital copy of each volume on Google Books. To find out why I think this is important,…

  • Les Circulations Musicales et Théâtrales, 1750-1815

    I’m writing this early one afternoon in Paris. The sky is grey, the air is cold, and Nice feels even further away than a six hour train journey. I’ve decided to compose a little post on my time in this city, both to record some of the new thoughts the conference inspired and, more ambitiously,…

  • Doing things with style

    I hesitate to admit this, but it’s quite rare for me to find an academic book that I enjoy reading. Maybe it’s because I’m picking the wrong authors, or maybe it’s because I always come to these volumes with such a utilitarian mindset that I make myself capable of taking pleasure in them. Sometimes, however,…

  • Translation / Performance

    I am not good at German. I am painfully aware of this, because I can measure my ability in this language against my skill with French, and so tell, with depressing accuracy, that I have the level of a first-year undergraduate. This has been making life hard for me recently, as I decided to include…