To mid-seventeenth-century theatergoers, William Shakespeare was just another dramatist. Yet barely a century later, he was England's most popular playwright and a household name. In this intriguing study, Don-John Dugas takes readers inside London's theaters and print shops to show how the practices of these intersecting enterprises helped transform Shakespeare from a run-of-the-mill author into the most performed playwright of all time-persuasively demonstrating that by the 1730s it was commerce, not criticism, that was the principal force driving Shakespeare's cultural dominance. This book is sure to please anyone interested in theater history, the history of the book, the origins of copyright, and Shakespeare himself.
