A Shakespearean Reading List

While the World Wide Web is a good resource with which to start, the best work on Shakespeare remains in print. Below is a selected bibliography for visitors interested in knowing more about Shakespeare and his works. The majority of these works can still be found in libraries and bookstores; hyperlinked titles are books for sale at Amazon.com.

• Andrews, John F. William Shakespeare: His World, His Work, His Influence. 3 vols. New York: Scribner, 1985.
• Astington, John H. ed. Development of Shakespeare's Theater (AMS Studies in the Renaissance). New York: AMS Press, 1992.
• Barker, Deborah E., and Ivo Kamps, eds. Shakespeare and Gender: A History. New York: Verso, 1995.
• Bates, Jonathon. The Genius of Shakespeare. London: Picador, 1997.
• Bentley, G. E. Shakespeare: A Biographical Handbook (Yale Shakespeare Supplements). New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961.
• Bentley, G. E. The Jacobean and Caroline Stage: Plays and Playwrights. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1956.
• Bevington, David, ed. The Complete Works of Shakespeare (7th Edition). New York: Longman, 2013.
• Blake, N. F. Shakespeare's Language: An Introduction. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1983.
• Bloom, Harold. Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. New York: Riverhead Books, 1998.
• Booth, Stephen, ed. Shakespeare's Sonnets (Yale Nota Bene). New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000.
• Bristol, Michael D. Shakespeares America. Oxford: Routledge, 1990.
• Carroll, William C. The Metamorphoses of Shakespearean Comedy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985.
• Cercignani, Fausto. Shakespeare's Works & Elizabethan Pronunciation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.
• Chambers, E. K. The Elizabethan Stage: 4-volume set. 4 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1923.
• Chambers, E. K. The Mediaeval Stage (Dover Books on Literature & Drama). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1903.
• Chambers, E. K. A short life of Shakespeare: With the sources. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1946.
• Chambers, E. K. William Shakespeare : A Study of facts and Problems - 2 Volume Complete Set ( Volumes I and II ). 2 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1930.
• Coster, E. L. The Shakespeare Country. London, 1981.
• Crystal, David and Ben Crystal. Shakespeare's Words: A Glossary and Language Companion. New York: Penguin Group, 2002.
• Drakakis, John, ed. Alternative Shakespeares (New Accents). Oxford: Routledge, 2002.
• Eagleton, Terry. William Shakespeare. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 1991.
• Eastman, Arthur M. A Short History of Shakespearean Criticism. New York: Random, 1968.
• Eccles, Mark Shakespeare in Warwickshire. Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1961.
• Evans, G. Blakemore, ed. The Riverside Shakespeare, 2nd Edition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1974.
• Felperin, Howard. Shakespearian Romance. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972.
• Frye, Northrop. Fools of Time: Studies in Shakespearean Tragedy (Alexander Lectures). Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1967.
• Garber, Marjorie. Shakespeare After All. New York: Random, 2008.
• Gassner, John and William Green, eds. Elizabethan Drama: Eight Plays. New York: Bantam Books, 1967.
• Goldman, Michael. Shakespeare and the Energies of Drama. Princeton: Princeton University Press: 1972.
• Gontar, David P. Hamlet Made Simple and Other Essays. Nashville: New English Review Press: 2013.
• Gontar, David P. Unreading Shakespeare. Nashville: New English Review Press: 2015.
• Greenblatt, Stephen. Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England (The New Historicism: Studies in Cultural Poetics) (No. 84). Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.
• Greenblatt, Stephen. Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2004.
• Gurr, Andrew. The Shakespearean Stage, 1574-1642. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980.
• Holland, Norman, et al. eds. Shakespeare's Personality. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1989.
• Honigmann, E. A. J. Shakespeare: The Lost Years. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985.
• Houston, John Porter. Shakespearean Sentences: A Study in Style and Syntax. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988.
• Hyland, Peter. An Introduction to Shakespeare: The Dramatist in His Context. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996.
• Jones, Emrys. The Origins of Shakespeare. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977.
• Jorgens, Jack. Shakespeare on Film. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977.
• Jowett, John; William Montgomery; Gary Taylor and Stanley Wells, eds. The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition. New York: Oxford University Press USA, 2005.
• Kastan, David Scott, ed. A Companion to Shakespeare. Oxford: Blackwell, 1999.
• Kay, Dennis. Shakespeare: His Life, Work, and Era. New York: W. Morrow, 1992.
• Kay, Dennis. English Authors Series: William Shakespeare: His Life and Times (Twayne's English Authors Series). New York: Twayne Publishers, 1995.
• Kermode, Frank. Shakespeare's Language. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 2000.
• Lamb, Charles and Mary Lamb. Tales from Shakespeare: Children's Classics. New York: Children's Classics, 1999.
• Lenz, Carolyn, ed. The Woman's Part: Feminist Criticism of Shakespeare. Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1980.
• Mack, Maynard. Everybody's Shakespeare: Reflections Chiefly on Tragedies. Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1993.
• McCrae, Scott. The Case for Shakespeare: The End of the Authorship Question. Westport: Praeger, 2005.
• Muir, Kenneth. The Sources of Shakespeare's Plays (Routledge Library Editions: Shakespeare). London: Methuen, 1977.
• Ogburn, Charlton. The Mysterious William Shakespeare: The Myth & the Reality. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1984.
• Patterson, Annabel. Shakespeare and Popular Voice. Oxford: Blackwell, 1989.
• Rowse, A. L. William Shakespeare: A Biography. New York: Harper and Row, 1963.
• Schoenbaum, Sam. Shakespeare: His Life, His Language, His Theater. New York: Signet Classics, 1990.
• Schoenbaum, Sam. Shakespeare's Lives. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970.
• Schoenbaum, Sam. William Shakespeare: A Compact Documentary Life (Oxford Paperbacks). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.
• Schoenbaum, Sam. William Shakespeare: Records and Images. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981.
• Shapiro, James. Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010.
• Snyder, Susan. The Comic Matrix of Shakespeare's Tragedies: Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979.
• Styan, J. L. Shakespeare's Stagecraft. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967.
• Tennenhouse, Leonard. Power on Display: The Politics of Shakespeare's Genres (Routledge Library Editions: Shakespeare). Oxford: Routledge, 2005.
• Wells, Stanley, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare Studies (Cambridge Companions to Literature). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
• Wilson, Ian. Shakespeare: The Evidence: Unlocking the Mysteries of the Man and His Work. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994.
• Young, David. The Action to the Word: Structure and Style in Shakespearean Tragedy. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990.