Brings together Shakespearean performance, audio drama studies and media history to offer the first detailed examination of Shakespeare productions on British radio.

* Opens up a new area of Shakespearean performance: audio production.
* Rereads these productions: rather than stuffy ‘Auntie Beeb’ educational plays, these are pieces of entertainment produced by exuberant people giving their interpretation of Shakespeare.
* Based on new research using documentary evidence and archive audio recordings.
* Every extant production has been listened to, providing a comprehensive account of the sound of these plays on BBC radio.

Taking you inside Shakespeare’s plays on the radio – how they sound and how they change and evolve – Andrea Smith provides an innovative history of Shakespearean performance. Based on meticulous new research using documentary evidence and archive audio recordings, Smith explores what it means to present Shakespeare as audio and how this can help us to gain a greater understanding of the plays themselves and the art of performing them. The BBC’s remit to ‘inform, educate and entertain’ has led to assumptions that these plays were presented as scholarly works rather than showbiz. Wrong! They feature all the careful crafting of any other production of Shakespeare’s work. This book puts these audio productions on a par with other forms of Shakespearean performance and offers detailed case studies to further the readers’ understanding of Shakespeare’s texts on air.