Includes bibliographical references (pages 197-216) and index.

What is the significance of Shylock's ring in "The Merchant of Venice"? How does Shakespeare create Gertrude's closet in "Hamlet"? How and why does Ariel prepare a banquet in "The Tempest"? In order to answer these and other questions, "Shakespeare and material culture" explores performance from the perspective of the material conditions of staging. In a period just starting to be touched by the allure of consumer culture, in which objects were central to the way gender and social status were experienced but also the subject of a palpable moral outrage, this book argues that material culture has a particularly complex and resonant role to play in Shakespeare's employment of his audience's imagination.