Shakespeare and the Department - Dabbs 1 SHAKESPEARE AND THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH THOMAS DABBS (Note: Pagination is different from the original article, and some small changes have been made.) The vast history of Shakespeare’s reception is marked essentially by one major change that occurred during the mid- to late nineteenth century. During this period the playwright was taken over by socially conscious educators and publishers, and his works were preserved for academic study in newly developed middle-class schools and colleges. Before the advent of mass English education. Shakespeare was well known in England because his works had been consistently revived and reproduced by the popular theater and the popular press; however, the difficulties presented by the very definition of the term popular have recently been the subject of a number of slippery and mind-grinding investigations into the social meanings and cultural implications of the phenomenon of popular culture. Therefore, it is necessary to begin this paper with a pedantic but blessedly short observation on the differences between the historical Shakespeare, who was a popular writer, and the current Shakespeare, who is an academic subject. And. it is also necessary to comment on how the term popular culture relates to the advent of mass production and hence mass culture. According to Raymond Williams, one of the modern definitions of popular culture would be, simply enough, the type of expression that is “well-liked by many people” (99). This definition is suitable but, in the case of Shakespeare's historical reception. not very helpful. Shakespeare‘s work has been and continues to be well liked. but there is an enormous difference between the way his works were marketed and received before the mid-nineteenth century and the way the Shakespeare industry operates today. Shakespeare was no doubt a popular figure during the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, and a few of his plays won prestige after altered versions of them appeared on the aristocratic Restoration stage. His works were then well received throughout the eighteenth century by practical-minded middle-class citizens who, although literate and urbane (and often fashion conscious and pretentious), were not educated or trained specifically in what we would consider literary studies. Shakespeare’s plays remained popular after his era because Restoration producers found them adaptable and later because eighteenth-century producers and publishers found them marketable as esteemed but accessible Restoration productions and not as an outgrowth of the yet-to-be-named Renaissance. As larger urban centers appeared and literacy became more prevalent, Shakespeare’s presence in culture was upheld not by the aristocracy or the literati but by a large following among upwardly mobile classes who by and large aped the social habits of Restoration aristocrats rather than trying to cultivate profound wisdom or to gain insights into universal or social truths (for broader studies of Shakespeare's reception. see Schoenbaum: Taylor; for the history of mass readerships, see Altick’s introduction). Before the era when the mass distribution of culture became possible, the term popular should not be taken to mean widespread or egalitarian (Lowenthal. 52). Shakespeare was well liked by many, but the playwright's general reception certainly could not be described as geographically widespread. During preindustrial periods, of course. the vast majority of people hailed from rural areas or small towns rather than from urban London or one of the handful of other provincial centers that had active theaters and citizens who could afford expensive editions. Furthermore, in preindustrial England, most of the population was illiterate. It would be difficult to argue for the cultural ubiquity of such a linguistic