ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a case for audio Shakespeare. It makes that case while giving the different but related media of radio and audio recordings an historical and a social context. The chapter begins with the narrative of how these sound media evolved. It also presents the case for studying audio by surveying interesting performers and performances, directors who often produced more Shakespeare than well-known stage directors, institutions that created Shakespeare programmes. Wes Folkerth identifies the first Shakespeare recording as Henry Irving's August 1888 recitation of the opening of Richard III. Some of the busiest directors of Shakespeare have worked in audio. Audio permits us to hear and understand the performance styles of previous generations of actors. Audio is seldom mentioned when biographies of great actors are written, although much is made of their stage and film work. The chapter concludes with texts seldom performed on stage or screen that are available on audio.
