ABSTRACT
It is a matter of increasing controversy and scandal whether or not the works of Shakespeare are foundational works of Western civilization. There is, however, considerably less uncertainty that they are founding documents in the history of modern show business. By the time Shakespeare began his professional career in London there was already a very lively market for a diverse range of cultural products and services. This market offered an array of alternatives to the participatory and collective forms of traditional culture to a new constituency of consumers. The appearance of anonymous customers for these products marks off a specialized sense of culture as a sphere of activity separate from the social and religious imperatives of the traditional community. Shakespeare’s works enter this market by way of two different and in some sense fundamentally opposed forms of production: theatrical performances and printed books. In this chapter I intend to analyze the complex relationship between these emerging media without assigning a privilege either to a theatrical or to a bookish Shakespeare. Instead of taking sides on this troublesome question, I will suggest that competition between these institutional regimes is a necessary part of any explanation of Shakespeare’s durable importance. The aim here will be to explore the early institutional formation of Shakespeare’s cultural authority and to suggest a pattern of long-term continuity in that institutional formation. I will look first at theater and then at printing in early modern England as both cultural and economic practices. In order to articulate the question of authority more precisely, I will then turn to the vexed and increasingly confused question of Shakespeare as an author, a question I hope to reformulate in terms of the broader issue of Shakespeare’s vocation.
