What did Shakespeare's first audiences know about the objects they saw on stage in his plays? How would people have understood them and how many of those things would we still recognise today? In the highly gendered and class-conscious society in which Shakespeare lived, we find out who owned these things, and who used them along racialised and gendered lines.

This book provides compelling introductions to 50+ objects and offers an 'object biography' of each thing, exploring the important work it did in the houses, shops, streets and civic spaces of early modern England.