Shakespeare's plays went far beyond the theatrical stage shortly after their appearance. Characters, lines, and recognizable plot devices transitioned into texts for the broadest audience, changing, shortening, becoming subjects of jokes, and acquiring new forms. This lecture will examine this process as a separate history - the history of the mass perception of Shakespeare in the 17th century. One direction of the conversation will be collections of jokes, where familiar characters could appear in unexpected surroundings. There were also ballads aimed at listeners and readers for whom the complex dramatic structure was not as important as the vivid image, conflict, or striking story. Scenes from Shakespeare's plays continued to be shown in London during the years of theater prohibition. Even then, the theatrical tradition did not disappear: individual episodes and adapted fragments found ways to exist outside the familiar stage. After publication, a work ceases to belong solely to the author and begins to depend on readers, actors, publishers, and new historical circumstances. Through ballads, jokes, and stage adaptations, it becomes clearer how Shakespeare's popularity was formed and why his characters quickly turned into cultural symbols. The lecture will be conducted by Vladimir Makarov - candidate of philological sciences, associate professor of the Department of Romance-Germanic Philology at the Orthodox St. Tikhon's University for the Humanities and co-chairman of the Shakespeare Commission of the Russian Academy of Sciences.