"Theatre of the Book is an account of the entangled histories of print and the theatre in Europe between the Renaissance and the late nineteenth century: a history of European dramatic publication (providing comparative and historical perspective to previous textual studies); an examination of the creation of the modern notion of text and performance; and a comparative genealogy of ideas about theatrical and textual reception. It shows that, far from being marginal to Renaissance dramatists, the printing press had an essential role to play in the birth of the modern theatre, crucially shaping the normative conception of theatre as a distinct aesthetic medium and of drama as a distinct narrative form, helping to forge a theatricalist aesthetics in opposition to 'the book'. Treating playtexts, engravings, actor portraits, notation systems, and theatrical ephemera at once as material objects and expressions of complex cultural formations, Theatre of the Book examines the European theatre's resistance to and continual refashioning of itself in the world of print."--BOOK JACKET.