"The volume explores both Shakespeare's relationship with actual printers, patrons, and readers, and the representation of writing, reading, and print within his works themselves. The essays are theoretically, critically, and methodologically wide-ranging. What all of the contributors share, however, is a sense of the importance of books - the books Shakespeare read, the books he represented within his works, and the books within which his works were first read - to our understanding of Shakespeare's cultural significance, both for his contemporaries and for us. Shakespeare's Book will be of particular interest to students and scholars of Renaissance literature, theatre and cultural history, textual bibliography, and the history of the book."--BOOK JACKET.