1. Audiences and reading; 2. Reading Italian humanism: elite literary coteries and Shakespeare's sonnets; 3. Reading Italian humanism: elite political coteries and Henry V; 4. Reading law: popular legal treatises and The Merry Wives of Windsor, Henry V and Othello; 5. Reading religion: Macbeth and the calvinist drama of discernment; 6. Reading politics: history, Richard II, and the public sphere.