Includes bibliographical references (pages 210-215) and index.
Audiences and reading -- Reading Italian humanism : elite literary coteries and Shake-speares sonnets -- Reading Italian humanism : elite political coteries and Henry V -- Reading law : popular legal treatises and The merry wives of Windsor, Henry V, and Othello -- Reading religion : Macbeth and the Calvinist drama of discernment -- Reading politics : history, Richard II, and the public sphere -- Afterword