
Who was on Shakespeare’s bookshelf? [infographic]
George Bernard Shaw once remarked on William Shakespeare’s “gift of telling a story (provided some one else told it to him first).” Shakespeare knew the works of many great writers, such as Raphael Holinshed, Ludovico Ariosto, and Geoffrey Chaucer. How did these men, and many others, influence Shakespeare and his work? The process of printing a book in the 16th century was demanding and expensive, and a printing house’s products were only available to a fraction of the English population. We explore the English Renaissance reading environment in the infographic below.
– See more at: http://blog.oup.com/2015/10/shakespeare-reading-literacy-publishing-infographic/#sthash.L7LkU8xX.dpuf