Reference resources include dictionaries, overviews of events or people, encyclopedias, and glossaries that help you look up words and quick facts. They help provide cultural or linguistic context and background for Shakespeare research.
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Shakespeare's Books: A Dictionary of Shakespeare's Sources, by
This is a comprehensive reference guide to Shakespeare's literary knowledge. An A-Z of nearly 200 entries covers the full range of writers and texts that influenced Shakespeare's work, from classical to contemporary. It explains current views on long-recognized sources and details others whose impact on the playwright has emerged more recently. Anonymous and collective works such as the Bible, Homilies, Emblems, Chronicle History plays, and the Morality tradition in drama are also covered. Entries for all major sources feature surveys of their place in Shakespeare's time, sample excerpts, detailed discussion of their relationship to the plays and poems, and full bibliography.
Shakespeare's Theatre: A Dictionary of His Stage Context, by
Shakespeare's Theatre consolidates the author's forty years of experience in studying and staging Shakespeare's plays. Under an alphabetical list of relevant terms, names and concepts, the book reviews current knowledge of the character and operation of theatres in Shakespeare's time, with an explanation of their origins. Coverage includes the practices of Elizabethan actors and script writers: methods of characterization; gesture, blocking and choreography, including music, dance and fighting; actors' rhetorical interaction with audiences; and use of costumes, stage props, and make-up. The author makes use of scripts and scholarship about original stagings of Shakespeare and suggests how those productions related to modern staging. Much of this material has developed as a result of the recent increased interest in the significance of performance for interpreting Shakespeare, including the recovery of the archaeological evidence about the original Rose and Globe Theaters. The book contains current bibliographies for each topic and consolidates these in an overall bibliography for Shakespeare and his theaters.
The Shakespeare Name and Place Dictionary, by
Entries provide the likely sources for a name; describe historical and mythological backgrounds; examine Shakespeare's presentation of a character or place; and suggest various interpretations of a name. Each entry contains line citations to William Shakespeare: The Complete Works, edited by Wells and Taylor, Oxford University Press, 1986.
Class and Society in Shakespeare: A Dictionary, by
The Continuum Shakespeare Dictionaries provide authoritative yet accessible guides to the principal subject-areas covered by the plays and poetry of Shakespeare. The dictionaries provide readers with a comprehensive guide to the topic under discussion, its occurrence and significance in Shakespeare's works, and its contemporary meanings. Entries range from a few lines in length to mini-essays, providing the opportunity to explore an important literary or historical concept or idea in depth. Entries include: apothecary, bear-baiting, Caesar, degree, gentry, Henry V, kingdom, London, masque, nobility, plague, society, treason, usury, whore and youth. They follow an easy to use three-part structure: a general introduction to the term or topic; a survey of its significance and use in Shakespeare's plays and a guide to further reading.
The Renaissance, by
An encyclopedia of the Renaissance with articles on various aspects of social, cultural, and political history such as literature, government, warfare, and technology, plus maps, charts, definitions, and chronology.