Shakespeare’s Early Readers: A Cultural History from 1590 to 1800

＂Shakespeare’s Early Readers covers the period from the publication of the first Shakespearean playbooks to the gradual disappearance of the monopoly on the publication of Shakespeare’s works, held by a handful of publishers, and the opening of the market to a wider readership in the course of the eighteenth century. In sum, the monograph addresses that crucial formative early modern ’moment’ when Shakespeare’s works began to permeate the public sphere both in London and elsewhere. His plays and poems were handed down, transformed, disseminated and appraised by his readers＂--