Shakespeare’s Audiences

<p>Shakespeare wrote for a theater in which the audience was understood to be and at times invited to be active and participatory. How have Shakespeare’s audiences from the sixteenth century to the present responded to that invitation? In what ways have consumers across different cultural contexts periods and platforms engaged with the performance of Shakespeare’s plays? What are some of the different approaches taken by scholars today in thinking about the role of Shakespeare's audiences and their relationship to performance? The chapters in this collection use a variety of methods and approaches to explore the global history of audience experience of Shakespearean performance in theater film radio and digital media. The approaches that these contributors take look at Shakespeare’s audiences through a variety of lenses including theater history dramaturgy film studies fan studies popular culture and performance. Together they provide both close studies of particular moments in the history of Shakespeare’s audiences and a broader understanding of the various often complex connections between and among those audiences across the long history of Shakespearean performance.</p>