The Shakespeare Reading List... *drum roll*

Words cannot describe the excitement I felt this morning as I opened the preliminary reading list for The Shakespeare Institute – at list until I saw how many books were listed. Granted, I am not expected to read them all, but my goodness it is long! Luckily I have several of these books already in my arsenal, including The Empty Space and 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare.

Now I just have to decide where I should start. Any suggestions?


General Works

BATE, Jonathan, The Genius of Shakespeare (London, 1997)

COX, J.D., and D.S. KASTAN, eds., A New History of Early English Drama (Columbia, 1997)

HONAN, P., Shakespeare: A Life (Oxford, 1998)

KASTAN, D.S., ed., A Companion to Shakespeare Studies (Oxford, 1999)

KINNEY, Arthur F., The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare (Oxford, 2011)

McDONALD, Russ, Bedford Companion to Shakespeare: An Introduction with Documents (Basingstoke, 1996)

ROSENBAUM, Ron, The Shakespeare Wars: Clashing Scholars, Public Fiascoes, Palace Coups (New York, 2006)

SHAPIRO, James, 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare (London, 2005)

WELLS, Stanley, and Margreta De GRAZIA, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare (Cambridge, 2001)


Textual Studies

BLAYNEY, Peter W.M., The First Folio of Shakespeare (Washington, D.C., 1991)

ERNE, Lukas, Shakespeare as Literary Dramatist (Cambridge, 2003)

ERNE, Lukas, and M.J. KIDNIE, Textual Performances: The Modern Reproduction of Shakespeare's Drama (Cambridge, 2004)

GIDDENS, Eugene, How to Read a Shakespearean Play Text (2011)

GREG, W.W., The Shakespeare First Folio (Oxford, 1955) OP

JOWETT, John, Shakespeare and Text (Oxford, 2007)

KASTAN, David Scott, Shakespeare and the Book (Cambridge, 2001)

PROUDFOOT, Richard, Shakespeare: Text, Stage, and Canon (London, 2001)

WELLS, Stanley and Gary TAYLOR, with John Jowett and William Montgomery, William Shakespeare: A Textual Companion (Oxford, 1987; reprint New York,1997).


Shakespeare Criticism

BARKER, Deborah and I. Kamps, eds., Shakespeare and Gender (London, 1995)

BATE, Jonathan, ed., The Romantics on Shakespeare (Harmondsworth, 1992)

CHEDGZOY, Kate, ed., Shakespeare, Feminism, and Gender (Basingstoke and New York, 2000)

DOLLIMORE, J. and A. SINFIELD, eds., Political Shakespeare: New Essays in Cultural Materialism (Manchester, 2nd edition, 1994)

DRAKAKIS, John, ed., Alternative Shakespeares (London, 1985)

HARRIS, Jonathan Gil, Shakespeare and Literary Theory (Oxford, 2010)

HAWKES, T., ed., Alternative Shakespeares vol. 2 (London, 1996)

HENDERSON, Diane, ed., Alternative Shakespeares vol. 3 (Abingdon, 2008)

KAMPS, I., ed., Materialist Shakespeare (London, 1995)

KERMODE, Frank, Shakespeare’s Language (London, 2000)

McDONALD, Russ, Shakespeare and the Arts of Language (Oxford, 2001)

LOOMBA, Ania, and Martin ORKIN, eds., Post-Colonial Shakespeares (London, 1998)

SMITH, D. Nichol, ed., Shakespeare Criticism (Oxford, 1916) Frequently reprinted. OP

TAYLOR, Gary, Reinventing Shakespeare: A Cultural History from the Restoration to the Present (London, 1990)

TAYLOR, Michael, Shakespeare Criticism in the Twentieth Century (Oxford, 2001)


Shakespeare in Performance

BARTON, John, Playing Shakespeare (London, 1984)

BATE, Jonathan and Russell JACKSON, Shakespeare: An Illustrated Stage History (Oxford, 1996)

BENNETT, Susan, Performing Nostalgia: Shifting Shakespeare and the Contemporary Past (London and New York, 1996)

BROOK, Peter, The Empty Space (London 1968)

BULMAN, James, ed., Shakespeare, Theory and Performance (London and New York, 1996)

DESSEN, Alan, Recovering Shakespeare’s Theatrical Vocabulary (Cambridge, 1995)

HODGDON, Barbara, The Shakespeare Trade: Performance and Appropriations (Philadelphia 1998)

HOGDON, Barbara, and W.B. WORTHEN, A Companion to Shakespeare and Performance (Oxford, 2005)

HOLLAND, Peter, English Shakespeares: Shakespeare on the English Stage in the 1990s (Cambridge, 1997)

JACKSON, Russell, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film, 2nd edn. (Cambridge, 2007)

KENNEDY, Dennis, Looking at Shakespeare: A Visual History of Twentieth-Century Performance (Cambridge, 1993)

MASSAI, Sonia, ed., World-Wide Shakespeares: Local Appropriations in Film and Performance (2005)

ROTHWELL, Kenneth, A History of Shakespeare on Screen: a Century of Film and Television (Cambridge, 1999)

STYAN, J.L., The Shakespeare Revolution: Criticism and Performance in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, 1977) OP

WELLS, Stanley, ed. Shakespeare in the Theatre: An Anthology of Criticism (Oxford, 1997)


Introductory Works in Related Areas

a) Early Modern History and Culture

AUGHTERSON, Kate, The English Renaissance: An Anthology of Sources and Documents (Abingdon, 2001)

BRIGGS, Julia, This Stage-Play World 2nd edn.(Oxford, 1997)

LOEWENSTEIN, David, and Janell MUELLER, eds., The Cambridge History of Early Modern Literature (Cambridge, 2002)

PECK, Linda Levy, ed., The Mental World of the Jacobean Court (Cambridge, 1991)

SHARPE, J.A., Early Modern England: A Social History, 2nd edn. (London, 1997)

b) Early Modern Theatre History

BENTLEY, G.E., The Profession of Dramatist in Shakespeare’s Time, 1590 - 1642 (Princeton, 1971) OP

GURR, Andrew, The Shakespearean Stage 1574 - 1642, 3rd edn. (Cambridge, 1992)

GURR, Andrew, The Shakespearian Playing Companies (Oxford, 1996)

GURR, Andrew, and Mariko ISHIKAWA, Staging in Shakespeare’s Theatres (Oxford, 2000)

STERN, Tiffany, Making Shakespeare: From Stage to Page (London, 2004)