Subject Guides: Shakespeare: Textual Resources

PRINT AND ELECTRONIC TEXTUAL RESOURCES (for comparing editions, studying word usage, etc.)

Early English Books Online (EEBO) - Images of Texts
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Early English Books Online - Images (EEBO) contains over 125,000 titles published between 1475-1700. Combining the listings of the major short-title catalogs, EEBO includes publications in all subjects: literature, religion, government, medicine, science, and music. EEBO provides the facsimile of each work, so researchers can study these publications as they appeared: books printed by William Caxton, the earliest editions of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, The Book of Common Prayer (1549), The King James Bible (1611), Shakespeare's First Folio (1623), and works by Erasmus, Sir Isaac Newton, Bacon, Sir Thomas More, Galileo, as well as acts of Parliament, government documents on the early slave trade, and musical exercises by Henry Purcell.

Early English Books Online (EEBO) - Texts This link opens in a new window
2,400 searchable and readable editions of EEBO documents that link immediately to the corresponding image files.

First Folio of Shakespeare - Humanities Reference PR 2751 .A15 1968b
prepared by Charlton Hinman. London ; New York : P. Hamilton, 1968. Facsimile of the First Folio of Shakespeare (London, 1623).
Harvard Concordance to Shakespeare - Humanities Reference PR 2892 .S62 1973a
by Marvin Spevack. Hildesheim, G. Olms, 1973. Print index of every word used in Shakespeare's plays and poems.

Literature Online (LION) This link opens in a new window
Indexes the full-text of nine literary databases dealing with English poetry and drama, 18th century fiction, American and African poetry and Shakespeare. "Editions and Adaptations of Shakespeare (1591-1911)" includes eleven major editions from the First Folio to the Cambridge edition of 1863-6, twenty-four separate contemporary printings of individual plays, selected apocrypha and related works and more than one hundred adaptations, sequels and burlesques from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.

Shakespeare's Words by David Crystal
Online version of the best-selling glossary and language companion. The site integrates the full text of the plays and poems with the entire Glossary database, allowing you to search for any word or phrase in Shakespeare's works, and to find all instances of words.

Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson Online This link opens in a new window
Presents the texts of all of Ben Jonson's plays, masques, poems, letters, and criticism in an interactive digital format. Also contains hundreds of supporting documents, musical scores, a bibliography, and a database of some 1,300 stage and screen productions.
LitFinder (Gale) This link opens in a new window
Find electronic text versions of Shakespeare's plays among other literary works.

Dictionaries

William Shakespeare, a Textual Companion - Humanities Reference PR 3071 .W44 1987
By Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor, with John Jowett, and William Montgomery. Oxford [Oxfordshire] : Clarendon Press ; New York : Oxford University Press, 1987.
The Shakespeare Name Dictionary - Humanities Reference PR 2892 .D33 1995
J. Madison Davis, A. Daniel Frankforter. New York : Garland, c1995.
Shakespeare's Language : a Glossary of Unfamiliar Words in Shakespeare's Plays & Poems - Humanities Reference PR 2892 .S447 1996
Eugene F. Shewmaker. New York : Facts On File, c1996.
A Dictionary of Shakespeare's Semantic Wordplay - Humanities Reference PR 2997 .P8 W47 1998
By Gilian West. Lewiston, NY : E. Mellen Press, 1998.

Oxford English Dictionary (OED) Online This link opens in a new window
The OED Online contains the complete searchable text of over half a million words from the 20 volume 2nd Edition. The dictionary traces the usage of words through 2.5 million quotations, offers etymological analysis, listings of variant spellings, and shows pronunciations. 1000 new and revised entries added quarterly. NOTE: The reference to the hard copy of the Oxford English Dictionary is HUM REF PE 1625 .O87

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Folger Editions

Folger Editions of Shakespeare's Plays & Poems Read the full text from the bestselling Folger Shakespeare editions. Learn more about Shakespeare’s language, life, and world View images from the Folger collection, which includes copies of every play and poem from the earliest printings to modern interpretations. Hear from artists and scholars in podcast interviews and articles. For teachers, explore a selection of Folger Education’s classroom-tested resources.

Bibliography Managers

Use one of these tools to import references of books, articles, and websites into folders and keep them organized. Create in-text citations and format your bibliography for your paper too.

RefWorks This link opens in a new window The new RefWorks 3.0 lets you save and share an unlimited number of references, full-text, and other research materials. Generate bibliographies and citations and integrate with either Word or Google Docs.
Zotero This link opens in a new window A free Firefox extension to help you collect, manage, and cite your research sources.