Simon Smith is Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon and the Department of English Literature, University of Birmingham. He has published widely on music in Shakespeare and early modern drama, and co-edited The Senses in Early Modern England, 1558–1660 (with Jackie Watson and Amy Kenny, 2015). His theatre-historical research informed the design of the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse at Shakespeare's Globe and he has provided historical music research - and occasionally musical direction - for many productions including Twelfth Night and Richard III at Shakespeare's Globe in 2012, The Tragedie of Cleopatra in 2013 at University College London and Wolf Hall on the BBC in 2015.
'With his announced focus on 'response' Smith makes a genuinely fresh and provocative contribution to the study of early modern theatre in England and, I would argue, to sound studies and musicology. This is the perfect moment for Smith's book to be published. It will find readers among younger, boundary-changing scholars in sound-based disciplines as well as among students of Shakespeare and early modern drama.' Bruce Smith, University of Southern California