LibGuides: Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature: Getting started

Using good quality resources and citing them correctly will enhance the quality of your work.

This guide brings together key resources in your subject.

Getting Started

Here are a few important resources to help you on your way:

British Universities Film and Video Council Shakespeare.
An International Database of Shakespeare on Film, Television and Radio. This authoritative online database of Shakespeare-related content in film, television, radio and video recordings is international in scope and holds over 6,500 records dating from the 1890s to the present day.
Cambridge Companions to Literature and Classics
The Cambridge Companions to Literature and Classics collection offers thousands of comprehensive and accessible essays on major authors, periods and genres, written by experts and designed for student readers. For the author Companions, each writer is placed in literary and historical context; their major works are analysed,either in separate chapters or grouped according to theme, and their influence on later writers assessed.
FindIt@Bham
The University of Birmingham Library resource discovery system, giving you details of where to find printed and electronic materials.
ProQuest Literature & Language
A cross-searchable collection of 11 databases including the MLA International Bibliography and British Humanities Index covering all areas of literature and language as well as British and American theses in these subjects.
ProQuest One Literature
ProQuest One Literature contains a large amount of literature citations from thousands of journals, monographs, dissertations, and many primary works – including rare and obscure texts, multiple versions, and non-traditional sources like comics, theatre performances, and author readings. Enhanced by interpretive sources such as book reviews and criticism sourced from wider, interdisciplinary publications in the fields such as humanities and history, it provides diverse, global perspectives with sources from all over the world
Shakespeare in Performance.
Shakespeare in Performance showcases rare and unique prompt books from the world-famous Folger Shakespeare Library. These prompt books tell the story of Shakespeare's plays as they were performed in theatres throughout Great Britain, the United States, and internationally, between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries.
World Shakespeare Bibliography
Indexes and abstracts books, reviews, articles, papers and theses on all aspects of Shakespeare and related subjects.

A guide to useful classmarks

Shakespeare - PR 2750 – PR 3112

PR2752 – PR 2755 – Modern editions of the plays. (N.B. the Main Library shelves these with criticism)

PR 2801 – PR 2839 – Criticism of individual plays in alphabetical order, All’s Well That Ends Well – The Winter’s Tale

PR 2894 – Biographies of Shakespeare

PR 2981 – PR 2985 – Criticism of plays by genre: Comedies, Late plays, Histories, Tragedies, Groups of plays

PR 2987 – Teaching Shakespeare, Shakespeare in education

PR 3071 – Textual criticism, editing Shakespeare

PR 3091 – Shakespeare in performance, general works

PR 3093 – Shakespeare on film and television

PR 3095 – Shakespeare in performance in the Elizabethan period

PR 3100 – Shakespeare in performance, modern

PR 3105 – PR 3109 – Shakespeare in performance in specific countries (PR 3105 is USA)

Other Renaissance dramatists

PR 2411 – PR 2749 – Anonymous works and authors A – S

PR 3135 – PR 3195 – Authors S – Z

General criticism of Renaissance drama

PR 651 (general) and PR 658 (alphabetical by topic)

General criticism of Renaissance literature (includes prose and poetry)

PR 421 (general) and PR 428 (alphabetical by topic)

Drama - PN

PN 2061 – PN 2071 – acting: method acting, movement, speech etc.

PN 2575 – PN 2599 – history of British theatre

PN 2589 – PN 2590 – Renaissance theatre: boy actors, Lord Chamberlain’s Men etc.

PN 2596 – theatre in specific towns: PN 2596.L7 – London, PN 2596.S7 – Stratford

PN 2598 – biographies of British actors