Denise Albanese discusses the analytical consequences of two book-length studies on Shakespeare and popular culture: Douglas Lanier's" Shakespeare and Modern Popular Culture" and Richard Burt's" Unspeakable ShaXXXspeares." Precisely because these studies aim to map out the terrain of the popular as each sees it, they represent exemplary engagements with topical analysis in the wake of cultural materialism, which during the 1980s and 1990s asserted that engaging with Shakespeare meant engaging with the political uses to which his texts were put.