This article analyses the relation of the printing press and theories of media and writing technology to Shakespearean poetics. It explores listening and alphabetic letters in Shakespeare’s language, drawing from the criticism of Joel Fineman and Jean-Luc Godard’s King Lear (1987), as well as instances in early modern culture in which language might seem to fragment or separate from the body, including the exegetical practice known as ‘text crumbling’ and recusant exorcisms. Proposing a media archaeology of aural and textual fragmentation, the article considers how and why Shakespeare’s attention to ears centres on engagement with the upheavals of early modern typographic print technology.