“Cleave the General Ear”

In the summer of 1937, the Columbia Broadcasting System and the National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) escalated their corporate competition by cross-programming Shakespeare radio festivals, “The Columbia Shakespeare Cycle” and NBC’s “Streamlined Shakespeare.” This chapter disputes the association of each program with the institutions of either Hollywood or Broadway by contextualizing both programs within a longer history of antitheatricality that had elevated Shakespeare as a literary icon for an emerging intellectual class. This chapter argues that both networks extended that history of antitheatricality by conceiving of radio audiences as readers of Shakespeare.