How to find Books and Articles on
Shakespeare and His Contemporaries
Fran Teague
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Every scholar has an individual modus operandi for finding out information on Shakespeare and Renaissance drama. Some like a particular bibliography; others go to a pet edition; still others live off the faded handouts they received in graduate school. Here are some works that will help you survive until you develop your own m.o. Many are in the Reference Room of the Main Library and the best way to become familiar with them is to USE THEM. I have organized them in terms of General Information, Editions, Reference Works, Bibliographies, Information on the Period, Special Tools, and Internet Resources. This icon  will bring you to the top of this page.

General Information
An obvious starting point for a student will be the textbooks for an advanced course. Working in Renaissance drama means that you must consider Shakespeare, as well as his contemporaries; nowadays one must consult and evaluate work in electronic form, as well as in print. In turn, all that means that you can drown in information if you aren't careful. Here's a four-step process. I've always found it easiest to begin by concentrating on specific works. Most reputable single play editions have introductions that survey critical problems and offer suggestions for further reading. As a general rule, then, the easiest way to find out about a particular play is (1) to locate a good recent edition of the individual work; if you aren't sure about the quality of such editions, look up reviews in good journals. But don't stop with the edition: (2) check standard reference works and bibliographies, particularly for work published subsequent to the edition. Finally, (3) browse through the major journals to pick up items not yet in bibliographies. Sometimes you'll need (4) background on the period or information found in special tools as well to complete your research.

Editions
Any reputable edition of Shakespeare's works will include background material, as well as bibliographies that guide you to other books and articles. In addition to the Riverside edition (which has been the standard American scholarly edition), scholars often cite the Pelican, New Oxford, and Bevington editions. Recently several new editions have been published that seem poised to be scholarly favorites, especially the new Norton and a number of CD-Rom editions. For more specific information on the criticism and scholarship about a play, check a sound single play edition. The Arden is the best single play edition of Shakespeare; begin your research in the Arden. Other good Shakespeare editions include the New Cambridge, New Oxford, Penguin, and Pelican. For classroom use, many like either the Signet, because, despite a weak text, it reprints excerpts of important secondary work, or the Folger (aka Washington Square), because it has good notes and layout.

For Shakespeare's contemporaries, first consider the single-play editions in the Revels series (comparable to the Arden Shakespeare), the University of Nebraska series (aka Regents Renaissance Drama), or the New Mermaids. The Fountainwell Drama Texts published by the University of California Press are also good. The standard Ben Jonson text (and a monument to scholarship) is by C. H. Herford, Percy and Evelyn Simpson. Oxford has also produced a new edition of Jonson, less lengthy, but easier to use; the Yale Ben Jonson (editions of individual plays) although never completed, is excellent. Fredson Bowers' 1973 edition of Marlowe is good, and other important editions are by Brooke, Gill, and Greg. For the neglected Beaumont and Fletcher, use the edition by Fredson Bowers, George Walton Williams, and Cyrus Hoy if it includes the play; otherwise, you must go back to either the incomplete Variorum edited by A. H. Bullen or the Complete Works edited by Glover and Waller. Middleton has recently attracted critical attention, but the standard edition remains the 19th-century one by A.H. Bullen; Gary Taylor's recent To Analyze Delight makes the case that Middleton is of particular significance; Taylor is the general editor of a new scholarly edition of Middleton's works that is slowly appearing. (And see below, under Internet resources.) There are a number of good anthologies, which drift in and out of print. M. L. Wine has a good if small collection; one that is less readable but fuller in coverage is by Brooke and Paradise. The 2-volume anthology by Frazer and Rabkin can be hard to come by, but offers excellent texts and good introductions. J. Q. Adams has an anthology of work, The Chief Pre-Shakespearean Drama. Another old but solid collection is Manly's Predecessors of Shakespeare. For late medieval/early Tudor drama, the Schell and Schucter anthology has been superceded by Bevington's collection.

Reference Works 
Russ MacDonald's Bedford Companion has an excellent bibliography and fine overview essays. Stanley Wells' Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare is also a good starting place for research; each chapter concludes with a bibliography and a final chapter discusses standard reference books. Michael Attaway and A. R. Braunmuller have prepared the Cambridge Companion to English Renaissance Drama on the same model. E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, and G. E. Bentley, Jacobean and Caroline Stage, give the historical background and most known historical data for all Renaissance plays and playwrights. Although it is well over fifty years old, E. K. Chambers, William Shakespeare: Facts and Problems is basic. A useful introductory work edited by John F. Andrews is William Shakespeare: His World, His Work, His Influence (N.Y.: Scribner's, 1985). It's a three volume set of sixty essays about aspects of Shakespeare study, each essay written by experts in the field for a lay audience. Another fine introductory reference work is Andrew Gurr's The Shakespearean Stage. Boris Ford's collection The Age of Shakespeare offers a useful survey of the period's literature. The two Prentice-Hall series, Twentieth-Century Interpretations and Twentieth-Century Views, reprint classic essays and are often underrated; a recent series edited by Harold Bloom, though somewhat idiosyncratic, also reprints a useful selection of material. A series of excellent guides to Shakespeare's contemporaries is published by Nebraska. The editors are Terence P. Logan and Denzell Smith and the titles are The Predecessors of Shakespeare, The Popular School, The New Intellectuals, and The Later Jacobean and Caroline Dramatists.

Bibliographies
For work done after 1970, the Shakespeare Quarterly bibliography is essential, as is the MLA bibliography, which you can find via the Galileo page for the University of Georgia library system. For work on Shakespeare done before 1930, the Furness Variorum edition is still a wonderful resource. James McManaway and Jeanne Roberts, Selective Bibliography of Shakespeare (1975) includes most of the important work done between 1930 and 1970. The few recent Variorum editions issued by MLA are excellent. The MLA also sponsors bibliographies of individual plays; another such series of bibliographies is published by Garland. For work done after 1970, the Shakespeare Quarterly bibliography is essential, as is the MLA bibliography. Information on longer studies and sound evaluations of them can be found in the annuals, The Year's Work in English and Shakespeare Survey; and the journal Studies in English Literature (SEL) has a year-end essay evaluating work in the field. Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama often has summary essays on particular playwrights or works. One should also consider using the Book Review Index to help evaluate a book of criticism since scholarly reviews often provide useful caveats.

The Period
Here are some basic literary histories that will offer you information about Shakespeare's contemporaries and world: Herbert Grierson, Cross Currents in English Literature of the 17th Century (1929); C. V. Wedgwood, Seventeenth Century English Literature (1970); The Oxford History of English Literature, vols. 3, 4, 5 (in Park Hall Main Office); and, of course, that old standard, the Cambridge History of English Literature. The recent work on the literary history done by such scholars as Stephen Greenblatt, Annabel Patterson, and Jonathan Goldberg should not be ignored; see, especially, Greenblatt's Renaissance Self-fashioning. For history by historians, look for work done by Lawrence Stone, Christopher Hill, or G. P. V. Akrigg. A History of Private Life, 3 vols., Philippe Aries and Georges Duby, eds. (1989), is fascinating, although its principal focus is the Continent rather than the British Isles. A good overview for the lay reader is The Oxford Illustrated History of Britain, ed. Kenneth Morgan.

Special Tools
An invaluable tool for Renaissance scholars is A. W. Pollard and G. R. Redgrave's A Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in English 1475-1640. This work is generally referred to as the STC and it literally lists all books published in England before 1640; for works from 1640-1700, you would consult Donald Wing's STC. Best of all, UGA has microfilm copies of virtually every item listed in the STC. Samuel Schoenbaum's A Documentary Life is the best source for information on Shakespeare's life. His Shakespeare's Lives is a lively account of the history of Shakespearean scholarship, while Gary Taylor's Reinventing Shakespeare traces the way Shakespeare became a literary icon. Geoffrey Bullough's Narrative and Dramatic Sources is an excellent multi-volume set that reprints the materials Shakespeare read as he wrote. Finally to track down the elusive Shakespearean line that you only remember half of, consult Marvin Spevack's Harvard Concordance to Shakespeare. An on-line edition will allow you to use a search engine, and Matty Farrow's Shakespeare Search Engine is said to be the best. For other quotations, you might use Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. Finally, the department has a computerized Riverside and Wordcruncher software; check with the Writing Center for more information. You can find every instance of a word and call passages up in seconds; what's especially useful is that it will allow you to search in variety of ways, so you can search for several different words, can exclude words, and so forth. The Ben Jonson Companion by D. Heyward Brock is a very useful tool for explaining puzzlements in Jonson's life and work. For Marlowe a book with a wonderfully apt title is State of the Art: Christopher Marlowe: A guide through the critical maze; it will give a quick rundown on critical issues, although it's less strong on the life of Marlowe.

Internet
Obviously the Internet offers an ever-growing wealth of resources, but be aware that items that are up on the world-wide web may not be refereed, edited, or accurate. One of the best guides that I know of to Shakespeare materials is Terry Gray's site, Mr. William Shakespeare on the Internet. Frankly, if he doesn't list it, it's probably not worth knowing about--or at least that's what I think currently. A model page by an individual is Chris Cleary's on Thomas Middleton; an impressive institutional page is the Marlowe home page done by Tufts University's Perseus Project. One can only hope that pages this strong will materialize for other Renaissance playwrights! Meanwhile the author pages in Anniina Jokinen's Luminarium offer reasonably up-to-date information about the canonical authors for the period; this site is beautifully designed. Finally there are Allen Liu's Voice of the Shuttle and Jack Lynch's Literary Resources, both excellent general resources for literary topics. But how, you may ask, are you to cite these materials? Try this page for assistance!  
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