Defoliating Playbooks and the Reading Public.

The article discusses the defoliating and mass printing of playbooks and the development of a reading public in England in the 1600s. Topics covered include the separation of speaker and reader in defoliating the folios of playwrights William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson and others, defoliation's referral to a smaller book format production fit for writers being newly collected, and the publication practices of the time. Also noted is the expansion of reading by a divided market for playbooks.