RESOURCES FOR EXPLORING A SHAKESPEARE PLAY:
Early texts &
Secondary
Sources
Table of Contents
Resources for Exploring a Shakespeare Play: Early Texts & Secondary Sources
Resources for introducing your students to Shakespeare scholarship. Includes guides to the earliest editions of the plays (and how they impact what we read today); how to use the OED to enhance close reading; and where to find perspectives from a diverse array of contemporary Shakespeare scholars.
1 On Early Modern Edi�ons of Shakespeare’s Plays, Maria Fahey
An introductory guide to reading early texts, including the quartos and folios, and using them to study Shakespeare’s plays
9 The Oxford English Dic�onary – the “OED”, Maria Fahey
A introduction to the Oxford English dictionary, how to access it, and how it can be used to enhance close reading and analysis of Shakespeare's texts
16 Secondary Sources – A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Mario DiGangi
A guide to secondary sources by contemporary Shakespeare scholars discussing patriarchal and political authority, as well as dissent and resistance used by women and commoners in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’
18 Secondary Sources – Othello, Mario DiGangi
A guide to secondary sources by contemporary Shakespeare scholars discussing the historical context and ideas surrounding marriage, race, ethnicity, and republican government to further discussions about ‘Othello’
20 Websites for the Study of Shakespeare, Mario DiGangi
A guide to online resources for studying 16th & 17th Century Original Texts, Shakespeare’s Works, and Shakespeare’s Life/Writing/Culture
Click �tles above to be taken to that sec�on.
ON EARLY MODERN EDITIONS of SHAKESPEARE’S PLAYS
Maria Fahey
Any editor who prepares a Shakespeare play for publication makes a number of decisions about how to transform the earliest surviving copies of the play into a modern edition. None of Shakespeare’s handwritten play manuscripts has survived, and, as far as anyone knows, Shakespeare was not involved in the publication of his plays. During Shakespeare’s lifetime some of his individual plays were published in small books called “quartos.” After Shakespeare’s death, his collected plays were published in a large book called a “folio.” The first edition of his collected plays, published in 1623 and entitled Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies, is now called the “First Folio.”
If you are studying a particular speech or scene in a Shakespeare play, looking at how it was published in the First Folio and any available quarto can be illuminating. What follows is an introduction, in six parts, to how early editions of Shakespeare’s plays can expand your choices for interpretation and performance.
1. Online Facsimiles of Early Editions
2. First Folio vs. Modern Editions
3. Quartos vs. First Folio
4. Early Modern vs. Modern Printing
5. Stage Directions in Early Texts
6. Variations in Early Texts
7. Ambiguous Words in Early Texts
ONLINE FACSIMILES of EARLY EDITIONS
If you are studying a particular speech or scene in a Shakespeare play, looking at how it was published in the First Folio and any available quarto can be illuminating. Happily, facsimiles of the earliest editions of Shakespeare’s plays are now available online. Here are some of the websites where you can find them:
The Bodleian First Folio
The British Library Treasures in Full: Shakespeare in Quarto
The Folger Library Digital Image Collection “LUNA”
The Folger Shakespeare Library First Folio Image Collection
Internet Shakespeare Editions
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Inspired by TFANA’s 2022 NEH Institute: Teaching Shakespeare’s Plays through Scholarship & Performance
1
FIRST FOLIO vs. MODERN EDITIONS
Below is the first scene of Macbeth as presented in the Folger Shakespeare Library online edition and in the First Folio. As you can see, modern editions update spelling and punctuation to fit contemporary publishing practices, and they include line numbers. Editors sometimes add stage directions not in the First Folio or early quartos, and they include notes that explain selected words and phrases. The information provided in a modern edition of a Shakespeare play, drawn from years of scholarship, is enormously helpful. The information also is inevitably from the point of view of a particular scholar There are times when you might like to look for yourself at the raw material of the early texts from which an editor has produced the modern edition you are reading.
Created by Maria Fahey, Friends Seminary Faculty, www.mariafranziskafahey.com
Inspired by TFANA’s 2022 NEH Institute: Teaching Shakespeare’s Plays through Scholarship & Performance
Macbeth Act 1, Scene 1 in Folger (2015)
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Macbeth Act 1, Scene 1 in First Folio (1623)
QUARTOS vs. FIRST FOLIO
The only existing early publication of Macbeth is in the First Folio. When a play, like Hamlet, exists in an early quarto or two in addition to the Folio, a modern editor must choose from among the variations in the early texts of the plays Consider Hamlet’s famous soliloquy as published in the three earliest existing editions of Hamlet, printed below. (Most modern editors base their edition of Hamlet on the 1604 Quarto and the First Folio.)
The 1603 Quarto (The First Quarto or “Q1”)
The 1604 Quarto (The Second Quarto or “Q2”)
The 1623 Folio (“The First Folio” or “F1”)
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EARLY MODERN vs. MODERN PRINTING
When you compare the facsimiles of the early modern texts of a Shakespeare play to the modern edition you are reading, you will notice a number of differences that might, at first, make reading the early texts a bit confusing:
• Spelling was not yet standardized. Notice “to die” and “puzzles” in the 1603 Quarto, the 1604 Quarto, and the 1623 Folio publications of Hamlet:
• Nouns are sometimes capitalized, whether or not they are proper nouns. Notice “whips” and “scorns” in the 1623 Folio:
• Early Modern English included the “long s,” a letter no longer used, that looks confusingly like the letter “f.” Notice “sleep,” “suffer,” and “question” in the 1604 Quarto of Hamlet:
Notice that the cross bar of an “f” is drawn completely through the stem of the letter You can see this above in “suffer” and below in “fortune,” “life,” and “from.
• Our letter “J” was often printed as “I” (and “j” as “i”). Notice “Judge” in the 1603 Quarto:
• “U” and “V” were not yet distinct letters. Our letter “U” was printed as “V” (and “u” as “v”) when at the start of a word. Notice “Love,” “Must give us,” “under,” and “undiscovered” in the 1623 Folio:
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4
STAGE DIRECTIONS in EARLY TEXTS
When staging or analyzing a scene, you can check to see what stage directions, if any, are included in the early texts and how they compare to those in your modern edition.
In his first line in the play, Hamlet responds to his uncle, King Claudius, who has recently married Hamlet’s mother and, thus, become his stepfather. When Claudius addresses Hamlet as “my cousin” and “now my son,” Hamlet remarks, “A little more than kin, and less than kind” (1.2.64-65). Although no stage direction is included in any of the early texts, many editors mark Hamlet’s response as an “aside.” Hamlet certainly might say this line “aside,” but he also might say it directly to Claudius. How and to whom do you imagine Hamlet says his first line in the play?
Here is Hamlet’s response as published in the 2020 Folger Shakespeare Library edition of the play. (The half brackets ( ⌜ ⌝ ) enclosing “aside” indicate that the stage direction has been added by the editor.)
Here it is as printed in the 1603 Quarto:
And here it is in the 1623 First Folio:
When staging or analyzing a scene, seeing what stage directions, if any, are included in the early texts can open up possibilities Although many modern editions enclose stage directions added by the editor in brackets, half-brackets, or parentheses, not all modern editions follow this convention Looking at facsimiles of the early texts lets you see for yourself what stage directions are included and gives you a fuller range of interpretative choices as you read, analyze, and perform the plays.
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Inspired by TFANA’s 2022 NEH Institute: Teaching Shakespeare’s Plays through Scholarship & Performance
5
VARIATIONS in EARLY TEXTS
When a Shakespeare play exists in the Folio and an early quarto, you can consult the facsimiles to see what variations exist. (Although some modern scholarly editions provide notes about textual variations, many editions do not.)
Here, for instance, is Othello’s final speech in the 1623 Folio and the 1622 Quarto publication of Othello
You will notice:
• In the Folio Othello compares himself to the “base Judean.” (“Base” is spelled with the obsolete “long s,” and J is printed with the letter “I.”)
• In the Quarto he compares himself to the “base Indian.”
Modern editors have to choose one of these variations base Judean or base Indian for their edition of the play. How does the difference affect your understanding of Othello’s sense of himself? Which analogy do you imagine Othello would make before he takes his own life? And what do these analogies reveal about the culture of Early Modern England?
Created by Maria Fahey, Friends Seminary Faculty, www.mariafranziskafahey.com
Inspired by TFANA’s 2022 NEH Institute: Teaching Shakespeare’s Plays through Scholarship & Performance
1623 First Folio Othello
1622 Quarto 1 Othello
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AMBIGUOUS WORDS in EARLY TEXTS
The Weïrd Weyard, Weyward, Wayward Sisters and a Wayward Son
The earliest existing text of Macbeth is in the First Folio; there are no existing early quartos of the play. Before the very first scene of the play, the Folio prints the stage direction, “Enter three witches.” (See page 2.) But the word “witch” appears only twice in the dialogue of the play: the “First Witch” quotes the sailor’s wife who shooed her away by saying, “Aroint thee, witch” (1.3.4), and the “Third Witch” lists “Witch’s mummy” as among the ingredients added to their cauldron (4.1.22). Elsewhere in the dialogue, the “witches” are called the “weyward Sisters,” the “weyard Sisters,” or the “weyard Women.” Some modern editions, like the Folger, print “weïrd” wherever the Folio prints “weyward” or “weyard.” (The spelling “weird” does not appear in the Folio.) Other modern editions print “wayward” where the Folio prints “weyward.”
Below are the places in the Folio where the sisters are called “weyward” or “weyard” and where Macbeth is called “wayward.” (These phrases have been highlighted.)
The sisters dance before they meet Macbeth (1.3.32-38):
Banquo contemplates Macbeth’s becoming king (3.1.1-3):
Lady Macbeth reads the letter from Macbeth (1.5.1-14):
Macbeth plans to visit the sisters (3.4.164-68):
Macbeth asks Lennox if he saw the sisters (4.1.155):
Banquo speaks to Macbeth (2.1.23-26):
Hecate scolds the sisters (3.5.10-14):
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How does the printing of weyard, weyward, and wayward in the First Folio and the forms and meanings these words outlined in the Oxford English Dictionary enrich or complicate your understanding of Macbeth’s witches? How might noticing the closer relation between “weird” and “wayward” in early modern spelling and pronunciation affect your understanding of the nature of the sisters? What new questions and ideas emerge about the place of the prophetic sisters in Macbeth’s Scotland?
Here are the online OED’s definitions for the adjective “weird” that pertain to people (1, 2a). Notice that “weyward” is listed as a form of “weird.”
And here are the online OED’s definitions for “wayward” that pertain to people (1a and 1c). Notice that “weyward” is listed as a form of “wayward.”
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THE OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY the “OED”
Maria Fahey
The Oxford English Dictionary is an invaluable resource when reading Shakespeare. What follows is a brief introduction, in five parts, to how the OED can enrich your understanding of works written more than 400 years ago by a poet-playwright with a famously large vocabulary.
1. Access to the OED in Print and Online
2. Information in the OED: What information is in the OED that is not in other dictionaries?
3. On Etymology: What is a word’s etymology and how might it be of interest?
4. On Older Meanings of Words: How might a word’s meanings have been different in Shakespeare’s day than in ours?
5. On Multiple Meanings of Words: How might the various meanings of a word broaden choices for interpreting a speech or scene?
ACCESS TO THE OED IN PRINT & ONLINE
In The Oxford English Dictionary you can find the history of how a word came into the English language its etymology and all of a word’s various meanings, past and present Because the OED includes so much information about each word, it is printed in twenty large volumes! Your library might have this set of books in its reference section.
The OED also is available online at oed.com. Personal subscriptions are pricey, but your school or local library card might grant you access. Ask your librarian if your library card or an available username and password will allow you to sign in. You will find these sign-in choices at oed.com:
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Inspired by TFANA’s 2022 NEH Institute: Teaching Shakespeare’s Plays through Scholarship & Performance
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INFORMATION in THE OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY
The OED provides information you can find in other English dictionaries, such as a word’s part of speech, pronunciation, and current definitions. The OED fills up twenty volumes, however, because it also provides the history of each word’s meanings, from the earliest known to the most recent. Each meaning is derived from occurrences of the word in written sources and is illustrated with quotations. Here’s the heading for the noun “weird” at oed.com.
If you click on “Forms,” you will see how the spelling of the word evolved over time
• Notice that the noun “weird” has been spelled wyrd, wird, wired, wirid, wirde, wyrde, word, wyerde, wierde, wed, werid, werde, weird, veird, wierd, waird, weard, and weerd!
If you click on “Etymology,” you will see the origins of the word in earlier languages.
• Notice that the noun “weird” is derived from an Old English word meaning “to become.”
If you click on “Meaning & use,” you will see a history of the word’s definitions and the range of years when each definition is relevant. Also provided are quotations of sentences where the word occurs and from which its definitions are derived, followed by the texts’ titles and publications dates.
• Notice that the noun “weird” first occurs in an Old English (“OE”) text. (The quoted sentence is in this earlier form of English.) Specific publication dates are not available for many early texts, but if you click on the “...” for this text, you will learn that it was translated into English by King Alfred who lived from c848-899 Thus, the earliest existing English text that includes the noun “weird” is from the ninth century.
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Nowadays the adjective “weird” is far more common than the noun. Below, in the “Meanings & use” entry for the adjective, you will see that the earliest instance of the adjective “weird” occurs circa 1400 more than 500 years after the noun and that three of the quoted passages from which the OED definitions are derived are from Shakespeare’s Macbeth!
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Here are the second, third, and fourth definitions of “weird” (without quotations). Notice that “weird,” originally associated with fate, destiny, and supernatural powers, eventually comes to mean “strange” or “odd” more generally.
And here is the “Etymology”entry. Notice that the etymology of the adjective “weird,” directs you to the noun “weird.” (See the highlighted phrase below.) Since a word’s origin in an earlier language is listed in the OED entry associated with the oldest form of the word in this case the noun “weird” you sometimes have to switch to the entry for another part of speech to discover a word’s full etymology.
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ON ETYMOLOGY
Just like every person, every word has an ancestry or heritage. Most English words have their origins in older forms of English or in other languages entirely.
A word’s ETYMOLOGY refers to its origins and history
EXAMPLE 1: the etymology of “deject”
Below is what you will find at oed.com for deject, a word that in the ordinary current sense means, “downcast” or “dispirited.”
Our English word deject has its origins in the Latin verb deicere, meaning “to throw down.”
EXAMPLE 2: the etymology of “villain”
Below is the etymology and first definition you will find at oed.com for villain. Note that the etymology reveals that the word “villain,” derived from the Latin villanus, originally referred to a villager, rural resident, or feudal servant. A word’s origins and history can reveal a great deal about cultural views, in this case attitudes toward lower class, rural people.
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Inspired by TFANA’s 2022 NEH Institute: Teaching Shakespeare’s Plays through Scholarship & Performance
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ON OLDER MEANINGS OF WORDS
The meanings of words change over time. As you make sense of a line in a Shakespeare play, the OED can alert you to meanings of a word that were familiar at the time the play was first performed and published. Take, for instance, the word “nice.” As you can see below in entries 1b, 9a, 9b, and 14a, the older—“Obsolete”—meanings of “nice” include “foolish,” “insubstantial,” “absurd,” “unimportant” and “trivial,” but eventually the meanings of “nice” come to include “pleasant” and “agreeable,” connotations more common nowadays. (The oed.com excerpt below is without quotations.)
Consider the word “nice” in Romeo and Juliet. When Friar John reports that he was not able to deliver the letter to Romeo that explains that Juliet eventually would awake from her death-like sleep, Friar Lawrence responds:
Unhappy fortune! By my brotherhood, The letter was not nice but full of charge, Of dear import, and the neglecting it May do much danger. (5.2.17-20)
Here “nice” could mean unimportant or trivial. (As you can see in the OED entry, agreeable or pleasant were meanings not current until 1747, long after Romeo and Juliet was written.) Realizing the danger of Romeo’s hearing news that Juliet is dead, Friar Lawrence emphasizes the importance of Romeo’s receiving his letter
Earlier in the play, when Benvolio reports to the Prince that Romeo attempted to persuade Tybalt not to fight, Benvolio says that Romeo pointed out to Tybalt that “the quarrel” was not worth fighting over. Here, “nice” could mean foolish , absurd, senseless, unimportant or trivial.:
Romeo, that spoke him fair, bid him bethink How nice the quarrel was, and urged withal Your high displeasure. (3.1.161-63).
Usually a modern edition of a Shakespeare play provides a note about a word with an obsolete meaning. (The 2011 Folger Shakespeare Library edition glosses “nice” as “trivial” at 5.2. and “trivial, trifling” at 3.1.). Looking at the OED, however, gives you the fullest range of meanings to consider. What meaning does your edition of Romeo and Juliet provide for the word “nice”? What definition do you think best fits each sentence?
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14
ON MULTIPLE MEANINGS OF WORDS
Words have more meanings than you might imagine. As you interpret a line, the OED will allow you to consider all of the possible meanings of a word. Take, for instance, the word “honest.” Below are the second, third, and fourth entries in the OED. The quotations for each definition are not shown, but you can see the range of years (for instance, “13931702”) when each meaning is considered current.
Notice that the fourth definition articulates how many people think about the word “honest” nowadays, namely an action done with “truthfulness” or a person who is “truthful” or “acts fairly and with integrity.” However, the second and third definitions indicate that in Shakespeare’s day “honest” also might be used to praise an inferior in “a patronizing way” and could refer specifically to a woman’s “sexual morality.”
Consider the various definitions of “honest” as you think about the forty-five times the word is spoken in Othello
• Might Iago feel patronized when Othello or Cassio calls him “Honest Iago” (1.3.295, 2.3.161, 2.3.312)?
• What might Othello mean when he tells Iago, “I do not think but Desdemona’s honest” (3.3.265)?
• What is the effect of Othello’s doubting his marriage and then referring to Iago as an “honest creature”: “Why did I marry? This honest creature doubtless /Sees and knows more, much more, than he unfolds” (3.3.243-44).
Which definition of “honest” do you think best fits each line? How do the multiple meanings of “honest” expand the possibilities for how to interpret and perform each scene?
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SECONDARY SOURCES - A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Mario DiGangi
Issues of authority, sex, and resistance in this beloved comedy center on women’s sexual and emotional autonomy in relation to fathers, husbands, rulers, and suitors. The play opens with Egeus complaining that his daughter Hermia refuses to marry the man of his choosing; Duke Theseus gives Hermia the choice of obedience to her father, death, or life in a convent. Theseus himself anticipates his marriage to Hippolyta, the Amazonian warrior he “wooed” with his “sword.” At the same time, the King and Queen of fairies, Oberon and Titania, are feuding over Titania’s refusal to relinquish to her husband a young boy, the son of a dead Indian votaress that Titania had dearly loved. The texts below explore modes of patriarchal and political authority in the play, as well as strategies of dissent and resistance used by women and commoners.
Bailey, Amanda. “Personification and the Political Imagination of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” In The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Embodiment: Gender, Sexuality, Race. Ed. Valerie Traub. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. 400–18. Bailey uses Bottom’s transformation in the context of early modern legal texts to address the politics of consent in the play.
Boehrer, Bruce. “Economies of Desire in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Shakespeare Studies 32 (2004): 99–117. Boehrer argues that marriage in the play is defined against both cross-species eroticism (e.g., Titania and the ass-headed Bottom) and same-sex eroticism (e.g., Titania and the votaress).
Kehler, Dorothea, ed. A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Critical Essays. New York: Routledge, 1998. A useful collection of essays that includes traditional and more contemporary approaches, including essays on gender, sexuality, status, and power.
Floyd-Wilson, Mary. “The Habitation of Airy Nothings in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” In Geographies of Embodiment in Early Modern England. Ed. Mary Floyd-Wilson and Garrett A. Sullivan, Jr. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. 243-61. Floyd-Wilson connects the invisible fairies of the play to early modern beliefs about the presence of spirits who could affect human beings.
Hendricks, Margo. “‘Obscured by Dreams’: Race, Empire, and Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Shakespeare Quarterly 47 (1996): 37-60. Hendricks argues that through its representation of India the play contributes to the emergent racist ideologies of English imperialism.
Created by Professor Mario DiGangi, Lehman College and the Graduate Center, CUNY Inspired by TFANA’s 2022 NEH Institute: Teaching Shakespeare’s Plays through Scholarship & Performance
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Loomba, Ania. “The Great Indian Vanishing Trick Colonialism, Property, and the Family in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” In A Feminist Companion to Shakespeare. 2nd ed. Ed. Dympna Callaghan. Oxford: Blackwell, 2016. 263–87. According to Loomba, the fairies’ conflict over the Indian boy represents a gendered struggle over colonial resources.
Schwarz, Kathryn. Tough Love: Amazon Encounters in the English Renaissance. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000. Schwarz addresses how Hippolyta’s identity as an Amazon affects the politics of gender hierarchy and marriage in the play.
Traub, Valerie. The Renaissance of Lesbianism in Early Modern England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Traub analyzes how the same-sex bonds of Hermia and Helena and of Titania and the Indian votaress are undone by the women’s impending marriages and by Titania’s submission to her husband.
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SECONDARY SOURCES – Othello
Mario DiGangi
With its central focus on an interracial marriage and a malcontent servant, Othello offers rich material for the study of authority, sex, and resistance in Shakespeare. Othello begins with a marriage that is at once happy for the spouses Desdemona and Othello’s accounts of their mutual love are among the most moving in Shakespeare and devastating for Brabantio, the patriarch who attempts to control his daughter’s freedom and assert racial boundaries. Brabantio, however, is soundly overruled, both by his daughter’s assertion of her sexual desires and by the republican values of Venice. The critical studies below can facilitate informed discussion of Renaissance ideas about marriage, race, ethnicity, and republican government, as well as provide historical contextualization about the multicultural Mediterranean world.
Bartels, Emily C. “The ‘Stranger of Here and Everywhere’: Othello and the Moor of Venice.” Speaking of the Moor: From “Alcazar” to “Othello.” Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008.
155–90. Bartels explores the historical implications of Shakespeare’s placing Othello, a Moorish general, in the service of the Venetian republic.
Bovilsky, Lara. Barbarous Play: Race on the English Renaissance Stage. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008. Bovilsky argues that Desdemona begins the play as pristinely white, but becomes racially “darkened” through her disobedience to her father and her sexual desire for a Moor.
Hall, Kim F., ed. Othello, the Moor of Venice: Texts and Contexts. Boston: Bedford-St. Martin’s, 2007. Hall’s excellent edition of the play provides scholarly accounts of topics such as race, religion, the Mediterranean, marriage, masculinity, and the passions.
Kolb, Laura. “Jewel, Purse, Trash: Reckoning and Reputation in Othello.” Shakespeare Studies 44 (2016): 230-262. Addressing the play’s pervasive economic language, Kolb argues that Iago provokes Othello’s jealousy by teaching him new ways of calculating both his own worth and Desdemona’s.
Loomba, Ania. “Othello and the Racial Question.” Shakespeare, Race, and Colonialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. 91-111. Loomba examines how medieval and newer ideas about Blacks and Muslims come together in Othello via the racialization of skin color, religion, and nation.
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Julia Reinhard Lupton. “Othello Circumcised.”
Citizen-Saints: Shakespeare and Political Theology.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. 103-123. Lupton explores the contradiction between the inclusiveness of Christian republican civic ideals and the actual exclusions of national and religious others.
MacDonald, Joyce Green. “Black Ram, White Ewe: Shakespeare, Race, and Women.” A Feminist Companion to Shakespeare. 2nd ed. Ed. Dympna Callaghan. John Wiley: 2016. 206-224. MacDonald explores how thoroughly “race permeates gender and class positions” in Othello, particularly through the domestication of women and their sexuality.
Neill, Michael. “Unproper Beds: Race, Adultery, and the Hideous in Othello.” Shakespeare Quarterly 40 (1989): 383-412. Neill explores how Othello’s murder of Desdemona in their martial bed has historically provoked “fear and revulsion” about the spectacle of interracial sex.
Smith, Ian. “Othello’s Black Handkerchief.” Shakespeare Quarterly 64 (2013): 1-25. Noting that black cloth was used to simulate African skin on the Renaissance stage, Smith argues that regarding Othello’s handkerchief as black instead of white can alert us to the racist representation of a “black man as a thing.”
. “We are Othello: Speaking of Race in Early Modern Studies.” Shakespeare Quarterly 67 (2016): 104124. Smith considers the implications of reading Othello in the contexts of academic racism and popular racism in the contemporary United States.
Thompson, Ayanna, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Race. Cambridge UP, 2021. This collection provides an excellent, up-to-date overview of major historical, critical, and theoretical perspectives for the study of race in Othello and Shakespeare generally.
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WEBSITES FOR THE STUDY OF SHAKESPEARE
Mario DiGangi
A.Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Original Texts
The Bodleian First Folio
https://firstfolio.bodleian.ox.ac.uk
On this website you can read a digital facsimile of a First Folio of Shakespeare’s plays held by the Bodleian Library, Oxford University (UK). What is the First Folio? In 1623, members of Shakespeare’s acting company published thirty-six of Shakespeare’s plays in a book titled Mr. William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies , commonly referred to today simply as “The First Folio.” A “folio” is a large book composed of sheets of paper folded only once. The folio format was most often used in Shakespeare’s time for prestigious writers’ collected “works” or for important philosophical, theological, or political treatises. The 1623 edition of Shakespeare’s plays is called the “First Folio” because it is the first of four seventeenth-century editions of that text. Two hundred thirty-five First Folios are known to survive. Some noteworthy features of the First Folio are the dedicatory poems and the “Catalogue” of plays that divides them into comedies, histories, and tragedies.
English Broadside Ballad Archive [EBBA]
https://ebba.english.ucsb.edu
Developed by Patricia Fumerton at the University of California at Santa Barbara, this public database contains over 9,000 searchable ballads (short narrative poems set to music, for a popular audience) from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. If you are looking for a specific ballad (perhaps one alluded to by Shakespeare!) you can search by ballad title, tune title, or even woodcut image. A fantastic feature is the keyword search, which will identify ballads by category such as “animals,” “family,” “holidays,” “London,” “mythology,” “race/ethnicity,” “royalty,” “sex/sexuality,” “travel,” “vulgar humor,” and many more. Ballads on these topics can be taught alongside Shakespeare’s treatment of similar issues in his plays.
Created by Mario DiGangi, Lehman College and the Graduate Center, CUNY. Inspired by TFANA’s 2022 NEH Institute: Teaching Shakespeare’s Plays through Scholarship & Performance
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B. Shakespeare’s Works Texts and Performance
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
http://shakespeare.mit.edu
This site offers modernized public domain editions of all of Shakespeare’s works, which are categorized as “Comedy,” “History,” “Tragedy,” and “Poetry.” There are no glosses or explanatory notes, however, which might make comprehension more challenging for less experienced readers.
The Folger Shakespeare
https://shakespeare.folger.edu
This site provides free on-line versions of the Folger Shakespeare editions of Shakespeare’s plays and poems. There are no glosses or explanatory notes, however, which might make comprehension more challenging for less experienced readers.
Internet Shakespeare Editions
https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca
This site provides various open-access Shakespeare resources, including old-spelling and modernized editions of plays, materials from over 1,000 film and stage productions, and scholarly essays on theater, society, politics, art, literature and music in Shakespeare’s England. For instance, the Measure for Measure page provides digital copies of the First Folio edition of the play; essays on “sex and morality,” “crime and punishment,” and “religious orders”; information about modern stage performances from around the world; and performance materials such as costume design artifacts, production photographs, and theater programs.
MIT Global Shakespeares Video and Performance Archive
https://globalshakespeares.mit.edu
Directed and edited by Peter Donaldson at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, this database provides access to several hundred performances of Shakespeare from all
Created by Mario DiGangi, Lehman College
CUNY.
and the Graduate Center,
Inspired by TFANA’s 2022 NEH Institute: Teaching Shakespeare’s Plays through Scholarship & Performance
21
over the world. For instance, twenty-six films, stage productions, and adaptations of Othello are available, including ones from Cyprus, Spain, Mexico, Brazil, Egypt, and India.
Shakespeare in Quarto
https://www.bl.uk/treasures/shakespeare/homepage.html
Unlike a large, expensive, folio text, a quarto was a smaller, cheaper format of book printed on sheets of paper that were folded four times (hence “quarto”). Curated by the British Library, this site offers free access to the 21 plays by Shakespeare that were printed in quarto format between 1594 and 1642. Plays are presented in facsimile and can be viewed one at a time or through side-by-side comparison.
Shakespeare’s Globe
https://www.shakespearesglobe.com/learn/research-and-collections/archivecollections
This site provides free access to the performing arts archive of the Globe Theater in London, including the Performance Archive (documenting performances at the Globe), the Moving Image and Audio Archive, and the Library Collections (featuring scholarly publications and rare books).
C. Research Tools: Shakespeare’s Life, Writing, and Culture
Folger Shakespeare Library
https://www.folger.edu/online-resources
The Folger makes several databases available to the public. Shakespeare Documented offers the largest collection of primary source materials relating to Shakespeare’s life. The Digital Image Collection (or LUNA) provides access to over 100,000 images from the Library’s collections, including books, theater memorabilia, manuscripts, and art.
Early English Books Online [EEBO]
https://www.english-corpora.org/eebo
This website is for highly targeted research into the language of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. It provides an open source version of over 25,000 searchable texts first
Created by Mario DiGangi, Lehman College
Center, CUNY.
and the Graduate
Inspired by TFANA’s 2022 NEH Institute: Teaching Shakespeare’s Plays through Scholarship & Performance
22
published from the 1470s through the 1690s. To use the site, you must first register (for free). You can perform various searches, such as word frequency in different decades; collocates (words that commonly appear next to each other); and concordance lines (the phrases and patterns in which a word appears).
JSTOR Understanding Shakespeare
https://www.jstor.org/understand/shakespeare
This site provides complete texts of Shakespeare’s plays, with individual passages linked to scholarly articles and book chapters that discuss that passage. For instance, the first line of Much Ado About Nothing, which mentions Don Pedro of Aragon’s visit to Messina, is linked to an article called “Spanish Rulers and Slandered Women: Sicily on the Early Modern Stage.” If your school or library subscribes to the JSTOR [short for “journal storage”] digital library, you can download complete articles.
OpenSourceShakespeare Concordance
http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/concordance
This searchable concordance of Shakespeare’s complete works allows you to search for any word either in full or in part form. For instance, a search for “natur” in Othello yields 22 instances from the play of the words “nature,” “Nature,” “natures,” “natural,” and “unnatural.” Search results are broken down by play or poem and present the word in the context of the passage in which it appears, along with line citations.
Oxford English Dictionary
https://www.oed.com
With a subscription at a school or public library, you can look up any word in the English language and see how its meanings have changed with time, along with representative quotations (often from Shakespeare!). See “How to Use the OED.”
Shakespeare’s Words
https://www.shakespeareswords.com
Created
Mario DiGangi, Lehman College
Center, CUNY.
by
and the Graduate
Inspired by TFANA’s 2022 NEH Institute: Teaching Shakespeare’s Plays through Scholarship & Performance
23
Ben and David Crystal’s site provides a glossary of all the words in Shakespeare’s texts that have since changed their meaning (or no longer exist) in modern English. You can search for individual words or refer to definitions of words that are highlighted in the provided texts of each of Shakespeare’s works. An audio option lets you hear how these words are pronounced, both in early modern and modern English. The site also includes a thesaurus and a database of word families (e.g., “majestic” / “majestical” / “majestically” / “majesty”).
World Shakespeare Bibliography www.worldshakesbib.org
Available by subscription, the World Shakespeare Bibliography is a searchable database of Shakespeare-related publications and performances worldwide since 1960.
Created by Mario DiGangi, Lehman College and the Graduate Center, CUNY. Inspired by TFANA’s 2022 NEH Institute: Teaching Shakespeare’s Plays through Scholarship & Performance
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