Uncovering important links between acting and authorship in early modern England, Nora Johnson traces the careers of Robert Armin, Nathan Field, Anthony Munday and Thomas Heywood, actors strongly interested in marketing themselves as authors and celebrities. However, the authorship they imagined had little to do with modern ideas of control and ownership. Shakespeare's famous silence about his own work is one strategy among many available to writers for the stage. Johnson provides an alternative to the debate between traditional and materialist readers of dramatic authorship.

Uncovering important links between acting and authorship in early modern England, Nora Johnson traces the careers of Robert Armin, Nathan Field, Anthony Munday and Thomas Heywood, actors strongly interested in marketing themselves as authors and celebrities. However, the authorship they imagined had little to do with modern ideas of control and ownership. Shakespeare's famous silence about his own work is one strategy among many available to writers for the stage. Johnson provides an alternative to the debate between traditional and materialist readers of dramatic authorship.