In it he talks (among many many other things - they guy CAN really talk) about marginalia and what they reveal / have revealed about some historic figures and why they are a good thing. Thoroughly recommended. Webcast LINK - click link at top of page “The Power of the Printed Word”.

You might also want to examine the consequences of publishing in parts, where reader feedback plays a role. There are numerous examples from Dickens (partworks), 18thC multi-volume prose where some volumes followed later (’Pamela’, ‘Sandford and Merton’), or right back to Madeleine de Scudéry and her ‘Artamène, ou le Grand Cyrus’, 10 vols, 1648-1653. Consider also modern soap operas with ‘feedback’ through the popular press.

Another thread is Brecht and his desire to make the audience question his theatre. That this rarely works, often requiring an audience more active than many audiences choose to be at the theatre, is relevant. Do readers want to be given charge of the narrative, or do quite that much work? Literature has a valid and important function as entertainment. Without this, it is a lecture.

You have to ask yourself if to some extent, Brecht simply over-extended his medium. He wanted to create a questioning audience through drama, rather than persuading an audience to question something by viewing a specific drama.

Fascinating stuff, refreshed by the opportunities of dynamically displayed/manipulated text.

There is a difference between text on a [paper] page that is presented consecutively, whether the reader chooses to read it that way or not, and text presented on electronic media, ordered by interactive/dynamic means. There are more options in the latter case.

We should not too easily read modern concepts into early circumstances simply because we can. The modern critic is never more than a metaphor away from talking complete tosh.

Drake is clearly an intelligent individual. It would be nice to know how typical he was as a reader.

‘Owners, Annotators and the Signs of Reading’ eds. Myers, Harris, and Mandelbrote. BL/Oak Knoll Press, 2005, cited elsewhere in responses contains an article by H. J. Jackson, ‘”Marginal Frivolities”: Readers’ Notes as Evidence for the History of Reading’ (pp.137-151) which is relevant.