ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the demographic make-up of early modern playreaders, focusing on what playbooks’ formal and paratextual aspects imply about the identities of these readers. It argues that quarto playbooks had a broad appeal that was both created and reflected by their material format, which placed them in the same category as other affordable quarto pamphlet publications. Providing a close analysis of readerly dramatic paratexts such as commendatory verses and epistles to the reader, the chapter confirms that playbooks were expected to attract a readership that encompassed the broad spectrum of social backgrounds and reading abilities to be found among early modern playhouse audiences, and that playreaders were assumed to be both male and female. It is argued that this broad readership at times caused anxiety among playwrights (as in the case of Ben Jonson), and at others was welcomed (as in the case of Thomas Heywood). It was, however, always an accepted possibility, and for this reason the writers of dramatic paratexts regularly exhorted readers to favourably ‘judge’ the play, encouraging less privileged readers to align their responses with those of their more educated social betters.
