ABSTRACT
Douglas Lanier locates the first audio Shakespeare at the introduction of the telephone in June 1876, when Alexander Graham Bell read Hamlet’s “To be, or not to be” speech (2005: 415). While one can posit earlier times when visually impaired people heard a play rather than saw it, Lanier is right to begin with this moment for the electronic transmission of Shakespeare. Like the telephone, audio Shakespeare is entirely non-visual. Directors and actors deliver interpretations, but the audience experience Shakespeare with their ears. They see the story only in their mind’s eye.
