Literatures in English: English Renaissance/Shakespeare
Historical Resources on Early Modern England
- Early English Books Online This link opens in a new windowEarly English Books Online (EEBO) contains over 125,000 books, pamphlets, broadsides, and other printed matter printed in England or its Colonies or in English anywhere during the years 1475-1700.
- Historical Abstracts This link opens in a new windowIndex with abstracts of journal articles, book reviews, media reviews, and dissertations on all aspects of world history from prehistory to the present. See America: History and Life for American and Canadian history. 1450 C.E. to the present.
- Oxford English Dictionary Online This link opens in a new window
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) attempts to chronicle the origin and use of words in the English language. Important features include quotations showing uses of words in different time periods, extensive etymologies and word histories, and a program of regular, continuing revision. This is the largest English dictionary in both number of words defined and information given for each word.
- Oxford Dictionary of National Biography This link opens in a new window1 simultaneous user. Contains 55,000 biographies of noteworthy people from all walks of life in the British past (not necessarily British citizens), including artists, scientists, writers, industrialists, performers, explorers, criminals, and eccentrics as well as politicians, church leaders, and soldiers, mariners, doctors, and lawyers. Bibliographies at the end of articles often include locations of individuals papers.
- Iter: Gateway to the Middle Ages and Renaissance This link opens in a new windowITER is an extensive database of journals and books pertaining to the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Included are references to drama, texts and some primary sources. Users may encounter content in this database the library has not purchased.
- Early PrintEarlyPrint is an open resource and a collaborative effort—centered doubly at Northwestern University and Washington University in St. Louis—to transform the early English print record, from 1473 to the early 1700s, into a linguistically annotated and deeply searchable text archive.
Shakespeare Resources
You can find print and ebooks using the library catalog. If you'd like to browse Shakespeare books on the second floor of King, you might try the call number range PR2700-PR3100.
- Digital Collection of the First Four FoliosCreated by Miami University's Special Collections.
- Editions and Adaptations of ShakespeareIncludes the complete text of eleven major editions of Shakespeares works, from the First Folio (1623) to the Cambridge edition of 1863-6.
- Folger Digital TextsFree, high-quality digital texts of Shakespeare's plays and poems start with the basics: superb source texts, meticulously edited on the basis of current scholarship. The plays and poems in Folger Digital Texts are taken from the Folger Shakespeare Library editions, completed in 2010 by editors Barbara Mowat and Paul Werstine and published by Simon & Schuster.
- The Global Shakespeares Video & Performance ArchiveThe Global Shakespeares Video & Performance Archive is a collaborative project providing online access to performances of Shakespeare from many parts of the world as well as essays and metadata by scholars and educators in the field.
- Internet Shakespeare EditionsThe aim of the Internet Shakespeare Editions is to inspire a love of Shakespeare's works in a world-wide audience. To do so, we create and publish works for the student, scholar, actor, and general reader in a form native to the medium of the Internet: scholarly, fully annotated texts of Shakespeare's plays, multimedia explorations of the context of Shakespeare's life and works, and records of his plays in performance.
- Shakespeare (journal from British Shakespeare Association)A major peer-reviewed journal, publishing articles drawn from the best of current international scholarship on the most recent developments in Shakespearean criticism. Its principal aim is to bridge the gap between the disciplines of Shakespeare in Performance Studies and Shakespeare in English Literature and Language.
- Shakespeare for Students: Critical Interpretations of Shakespeare's Plays and PoetryCollection of essays by Shakespeare scholars. Each entry includes a plot synopsis, character list, discussion of principal themes and historical context, and a critical overview for 27 plays and the sonnets.
- Shakespeare QuarterlyFounded in 1950 by the Shakespeare Association of America. Housed and published by the Folger Shakespeare Library since 1972 and in association with George Washington University, SQ is the world's foremost journal focusing on all aspects of Shakespeare studies.
- The Shakespeare Quartos ArchiveThe Shakespeare Quartos Archive is a digital collection of pre-1642 editions of William Shakespeare's plays.
New Shakespeare Resources
- Shakespeare Plays (BBC) This link opens in a new windowThe BBC Shakespeare collection is a series of 37 British television adaptations of the plays of William Shakespeare, created by Cedric Messina and broadcast by BBC Television between 1978 and 1985.
- Drama OnlineThe Bloomsbury Drama Online platform provides access to playtexts, video recordings of staged performances, critical and contextual writings, and practical guides to performance and dramaturgy. Supports research in theatre and literary studies. Includes a tools for discovering monologues and play texts that fit selected criteria. Coverage of Shakespeare and British theatre is especially strong. Users may encounter content in this database the library has not purchased.
