Reading Practices

Overview & Synopsis

Literacy, the playbook market and the reading of plays "From the most able, to him that can but spell: There you are number'd," wrote John Heminges and Henry Condell-Shakespeare's fellow actors-in their preface "To the great Variety of Readers", which appeared in the first folio of Shakespeare's works (sig. A3 r). In a society that was still steeped in oral culture and in which the command of the written word was not a prerequisite for many professions, these statements could appear to be wishful thinking. Moreover, according to some historians' estimations, two thirds of the male