As Cole Porter knew, Shakespeare was embedded in post-war American popular culture. “Brush up your Shakespeare,” instructs a “Bowery Waltz” in the 1948 Broadway musical, Kiss Me Kate, “Start quoting him now / Brush up your Shakespeare / And the women you will wow.”
Brush up your Shakespeare / words and music by Cole Porter (New York, N.Y. : Buxton Hill Music Corp., c1949). Sheet music, for voice and piano with chord symbols and diagrams for ukulele, from the collections of the Beinecke Library, Yale University
There is an exhibition of miniature Shakespeare-related Designer Bookbindings, called ‘Brush Up your Shakespeare’. It is the collection of Neale Albert, and is at the John Rylands Library in Manchester, in June. I posted details on my website here http://www.dewaldenpress.com/impressions/king-lear-illuminated.html
Neale Albert is a New York collector who commissioned many beautiful bindings of miniature Shakespeare books from bookbinders around the world.