Literate households in the 17th century would have had the Bible, John Bunyan's "The Pilgrim's Progress," and a couple of other books. Shakespeare plays were cheap, so you could buy those, but a folio cost a pound, which was an incredible amount of money then.
Stephen GreenblattCompared to the unleashed forces of warfare and of faith, Mount Vesuvius was kinder to the legacy of antiquity.
Stephen GreenblattNow a Protestant confronting a Catholic ghost is exactly Shakespeare's way of grappling with what was not simply a general social problem but one lived out in his own life.
Stephen Greenblatt