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Shakespeare Research Guide: Background Information

A guide to scholarly sources for the study and teaching of Shakesepeare's works.

General Dictionaries

Bibliographies - Finding Key Texts

Shakespeare Encyclopedias and Companions

Encyclopedias and Biographies

The library provides many good sources for finding background information on Shakespeare as noted above.  Scholarly encyclopedias an help you define terms, get an overview of the Renaissance period and recommend more in-depth academic sources on your topic. Author biographies can also be useful for understanding the context in which a work was written, and you will find them via the Biography section of the Literature Subject Guide. More general encyclopedias and dictionaries of literary terms and criticsm can be found in the Encyclopedias and Dictionaries section.

Shakespeare Concordances

An alphabetical index of all the significant words used in a text or related group of texts, indicating all the places in which each word is used. Useful for comparing and contrasting how Shakespeare used specific words in different contexts and works.

Primary Sources