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Shakespeare scholars Harry McCarthy and Hailey Bacharach talk about their love of Shakespeare and their innovative and fresh introductions to a new set of Shakespeare’s classic texts with the series editor Professor Emma Smith.

The New Oxford Shakespeare series was launched in 2024 and is spearheaded by Smith, a renowned Shakespeare expert and fellow and tutor in English at the University of Oxford. Each book provides the latest thinking on the authentic texts alongside an introduction from a leading scholar who sets the play in a modern context.

McCarthy, a lecturer in early modern literature at the University of Exeter, analyses Shakespeare’s bloodiest play, Titus Andronicus. He looks at the wider debate about Shakespeare’s cultural value and considers the plays more problematic aspects, including racism and sexual violence.

Bachrach, an early career fellow at Roehampton University studying Shakespeare and consent, looks at Richard II and analyses its queer performance history, explores historical contexts alluded to by the play and assesses its impact on political events of the 1590s.