Textual Intercourse brings together literary criticism, theater history, the study of printed books, and gender studies, to show how the writing of Renaissance drama was conceptualized in the languages of sex, gender, and eroticism. Jeffrey Masten argues that the plays of Shakespeare and others, and the way in which those plays were first printed, illustrates a shift from a model of collaboration to one of singular authorship. Using methods attuned to sexuality and gender, Masten illuminates questions of authorship and intellectual property.