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Books By and About Shakespeare
The Shakepeare complete works editions have generous amounts of supplementary materials. Unfortunately, they can be cumbersome to hold and have small print and narrow margins. Warning: the Arden Shakespeare Complete Works and the Oxford Shakespeare do not have glosses or footnotes.
"The Big Three"
The Norton Shakespeare: Based on the Oxford Edition
The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition
Other Editions
The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works
The Complete Pelican Shakespeare (Pelican Shakespeare)
The Complete Works of Shakespeare
The individual title series below are readily available, range in price from about $4-$15, and are comfortable to hold and read. They all have generous glosses, footnotes, and background materials. The New Folger Library editions and the Everyman Shakespeare are inexpensive with generous explanatory notes on facing pages. The Pelican Shakespeare and Bantam Classics are also inexpensive and conveniently have a line number on every line for which there is a glossarial footnote. The very helpful New Penguin Shakespeare offers copious commentary on practically every line, but unfortunately the notes are at the back of the book (so read it with two bookmarks). The Arden, Oxford World Classics, and the New Cambridge are more handsomely bound paperbacks featuring same-page commentary and detailed scholarship catering to those interested in Shakespeare's sources and influences. The just rereleased Kittredge Shakespeare is worth a look.
Shakespeare's Language
Shakespeare After All
Shadowplay: The Hidden Beliefs And Coded Politics of William Shakespeare
Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human
Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare (S. Greenblatt) (Did Shakespeare leave verbal traces?)
Helen Vendlers' book provides absorbing, revealing commentary on each of Shakespeare's sonnets. Or try Stephen Booth's award-winning book.
The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets
Shakespeare's Sonnets (Yale Nota Bene)
Schmidt's is the most complete of the Shakespeare dictionaries though it was published before the Oxford English Dictionary and could not benefit from that scholarship. Onion's A Shakespeare Glossary (revised in 1986) is helpful but incomplete. Crystal's Shakespeare glossary omits many words but is up-to-date and has fascinating side panels covering dozens of specialized language areas from swear words to greetings to kinship terms. Coined.... should please word lovers, and Shakespeare's Bawdy is supposed to help you "get it." Or why not become your own scholar and search the Oxford English Dictionary itself.
Shakespeare Lexicon, Vol. 1
Shakespeare Lexicon, Vol. 2
Shakespeare's Words: A Glossary and Language Companion
A Shakespeare Glossary
Coined by Shakespeare: Words and Meanings First Penned by the Bard
Shakespeare's Bawdy (Routledge Classics)
The Compact Edition of The Oxford English Dictionary, Complete TextReproduced Micrographically (in slipcase with reading glass)
eBooks $4.95
