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Shakespeare

Contemporaries, Sources, & Context

Contemporaries

Who's Who in Shakespeare's England.
By Alan & Veronica Palmer.
New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999.
This work identifies the real-life historical contemporaries of the playwright: prominent English men and women in the years 1590 to 1623.

Online access is free through the Internet Archive, but you need to create an account.

Also available in print at UofT.
Shakespeare Collection
Gale Thomson Corporation, 2006.
This primary source collection includes versions of Shakespeare's plays from the 17th through the 19th centuries, along with the first folio and quartos. Besides the works of the man himself, the collection contains a wealth of contextual material such as works by Shakespeare's contemporaries and texts by stage managers.
Shakespeare’s Medieval Craft : Remnants of the Mysteries on the London Stage.
By Kurt A. Schreyer.
Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2014.
A Topographical Dictionary to the Works of Shakespeare and his Fellow Dramatists.
By Edward H. Sugden.
Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1925.
This Topographical Dictionary provides a long list of place-names (e.g. towns, countries, rivers and streets) accompanied by a brief article about each and an exact reference to their mention in Shakespeare's plays. The Topographical Dictionary also includes several place-names which occur in Milton and Spenser, as well as a bibliography of related sources.

Also available in print at UofT.

Sources

Shakespeare’s Sources: Comedies and Tragedies.
By Kenneth Muir.
Oxford: Routledge, 2005.
First published in 1961.
Shakespeare's Books: A Dictionary of Shakespeare Sources.
By Stuart Gillespie.
London: Continuum, 2004.
Also available in print at UofT.
Shakespeare's Resources.
By John Drakakis.
Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2021.
Revisiting Shakespeare’s Italian Resources : Memory and Reuse.
Edited by Silvia Bigliazzi.
Oxford: Taylor & Francis Group, 2024.
Ovid and Adaptation in Early Modern English Theatre.
Edited by Lisa Starks.
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020.
Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare.
By Geoffrey Bullough.
London: Routledge and Paul, 1957.
This eight volume set sketches the context in which Shakespeare wrote each of his plays, shows the relationship between the plays and sources Shakespeare drew on to develop his plots and characters, and demonstrates how he adapted these sources. The set includes introductory essays for the plays and a categorized bibliography at the end of each volume.
Rethinking Shakespeare Source Study: Audiences, Authors, and Digital Technologies.
Edited by Dennis Austin Britton and Melissa Walter.
London: Taylor and Francis, 2017.
Shakespeare and Authority: Citations, Conceptions and Constructions.
ISBN: 9781137578525

Edited by Katie Halsey and Angus Vine.
London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2018.

Context

Medieval Shakespeare: Pasts and Presents.
Edited by Ruth Morse, Helen Cooper, and Peter Holland.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.

Also available in print at UofT.

Last Updated: Apr 10, 2025 7:53 PM
URL: https://guides.library.utoronto.ca/shakespeare
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Subjects: English Literature, Literature

Tags: English Literature, literature, Shakespeare, william shakespeare

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