Dr Hannah August Photo: supplied
Photo: supplied
The only reason any of Shakespeare's plays have survived is because canny publishers saw a market for them amongst a populace hungry for material to read.
In the 1600's the novel as a genre didn't really exist in England, so it was poetry and particularly plays that people were reading for pleasure - and titillation.
Dr. Hannah August is the Senior Lecturer in English at Massey University. She's been researching the habits and the surviving publications owned by 16th and 17th century readers for her book Playbooks and their Readers in Early Modern England.
She talks to Lynn Freeman about the appeal of plays in a century where printed plays were best-sellers.
Playbooks and their Readers in Early Modern England by Dr Hannah August is published by Routledge Hannah is giving a lecture on it this Wednesday at the University of Otago's Centre for the Book.
