This gets covered in most theater history courses (it's where I first heard about it, back a slightly embarrassing number of years ago).

The thing that tickles me is -- people were wanking about the quality fo a performance in a Shakespeare production. Granted, there wasn't much else around in the way of alternate entertainment options, but still when you compare it to today, when the most commont topique du wank is about whether or not co-stars in various shows are schtupping, or whether or not this or that singer is cute, it...somehow feels like civilization's taken a wrong turn somewhere.