Shakespeare and material culture

Abstract

This article outlines the various ways in which recent criticism has related Shakespeare’s plays to early modern material culture, and suggests directions for future scholarship in this area. It explores writing about material culture and the construction of identity, about the materiality of the production and consumption practices of which the early modern theatre was a part, and about the use of stage properties in Shakespeare’s plays. In doing so, it argues that the study of material culture has been responsible for two major changes in our received wisdom about the early modern stage – it has enabled us to challenge and problematise our notions of both the ‘all-male’ and the ‘bare’ stage, devoid of props. It suggests that greater scholarly attention to the forms of material culture – to early modern objects and the processes with which they were associated – will offer us fruitful new avenues into the way Shakespeare’s plays work upon their audiences.