Eureka

My explorations of the "Shakespeare" and "business" combination have yielded interesting results this semester, mainly focusing on interpersonal dynamics that appear in Shakespeare and can be applied to a corporate setting. Recently, though, I'm becoming more fascinated with the idea of Shakespeare as a product. A play is not a traditional, tangible product, but it certainly fulfills a need and generates revenue, so there must be something to it.  My searches of library databases, Google, etc. did not yield too many results for "product" and "Shakespeare," other than a handful of existing companies (electronic products, fishing tackle, you name it) that have borrowed the Shakespeare name.

HOWEVER...today I had a major breakthrough.  Using the library catalog, I found the perfect book: Marketing the Bard, by Don-John Dugas. The book is exactly what I've been hoping for.  Here's a small excerpt from the preface:

This book is about how theater managers, adapters, and publishers packaged Shakespeare's plays for commercial consumption, and how those reembodied artifacts affected Shakespeare's popularity.

The driving focus of the book is Shakespeare as a commodity, and I'm thrilled to read further and learn more of what Dugas has to say.  I've already read the preface, and I'll definitely start connecting the chapters to some of the close analyses that I do with the plays.