Here you will find - as we hope - useful links to Shakespeare-related sites on the Internet. If you are a student and looking for enlightenment regarding a paper, you should also take a look at the Homework & Understanding section where we hid some student-specific links.

• What are best Shakespeare-related sites on the Internet?
• What are some good web sites for specific plays?
• What are some other resources on the Web for Elizabethan drama?

What are good Shakespeare related sites on the Internet?

Since the Web is in constant flux, it is always a good idea to consult one of the major search engines first. Yahoo lists an array of Shakespeare sites under several category headings.

The two best Shakespeare sites for obtaining e-texts of Shakespeare's plays and poems are the Complete Works at MIT (maintained by Jeremy Hylton) and The Works of the Bard (maintained by Matty Farrow).
Both of these sites offer the Moby editions of the plays, poems and sonnets, as well as a search engine that enables one to search particular plays or the complete works for keywords or phrases.

Many Shakespearean texts exist in multiple versions. Links to a number of Shakespearean e-texts (including the 1603 and 1604 Hamlet Quarto, and a 1619 Lear Quarto), may be found at McGill University's Shakespeare site.

Perhaps the most comprehensive website is Terry Gray's Mr. William Shakespeare and the Internet; even the most knowledgeable Shakespearean can learn a thing or two via its extensive array of links.

Did Shakespeare say that? The on-line edition of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations is a convenient source for Shakespeare's most famous lines.

For information on Elizabethan costumes, try The Costume Page.

Illustrations and paintings inspired by the works of Shakespeare can be viewed at Emory University's Shakespeare Illustrated site.

A guide to William Shakespeare's hometown of Stratford may be found at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust site.

An exploration of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, where his plays were first staged, may be found here.

The best-known Shakespeare-related mailing list is SHAKSPER, The Global Electronic Shakespeare Conference, which offers announcements, scholarly papers, texts, and bibliographies. No academic qualifications are required for membership: anyone interested in English Literature, the Renaissance, or Drama is welcome to join. Write to the editor or send a one-line email message, reading "SUB SHAKSPER firstname lastname" to listserv@shaksper.net, and you will receive detailed information with further instructions.

Information about other Shakespeare mailing lists can be obtained at Lizst, the Mailing List Web site. Enter "Shakespeare" on the Topic line, and hit "Search".

What are some good web sites for specific plays?

In addition to the sites listed above, some websites are devoted to a single play. Other sites, which deal with historical subjects, can also be of assistance in obtaining a broader understanding of a particular work.

Hamlet: Ian Delaney's student-oriented A Short Course on Shakespeare's Hamlet offers the play's text, a detailed plot synopsis, an analysis of the individual characters, as well as some interesting links, such as to the texts of Saxo Grammaticus and Belleforest, who offered earlier versions of the "Amelth" story.

Macbeth: A well-organized student-oriented site, Birnam Wood on the Net , offers an annotated hypertext, some historical background on the actual 11th century King Macbeth, brief essays on some of the play's major themes, photographs from both stage and screen performances, a discussion of the notorious jinx that has plagued "The Scottish Play" through the centuries, and even a few sample "final exams" you can take on-line.

Othello: The Othello Navigator consists of a scene-by-scene plot synopsis, and a brief discussion of the characters and some of the play's major themes.

Richard III: If you can deal with the cognitive dissonance of regarding Richard III as "the good guy", even the experienced Shakespearean will find the The Richard III and Yorkist History Server (sponsored by the Richard III Society) an ample resource of both historical and literary information, from Richard's time down through our own. Among its many offerings, along with an excellent annotated hypertext edition of Shakespeare's play, are such rarities as Thomas More's The History of King Richard the Third, (which helped create the myth of the hunchbacked deformed Richard, and served as one of Shakespeare's primary sources), the Colley Cibber version of Richard III (which supplanted Shakespeare's on stage until the beginning of the 19th century), an essay on Richard by the 16-year-old Jane Austen, etc.

King Lear: Dr. Ed Friedlander's student-oriented site Enjoying Lear is a somewhat pretentious but nevertheless informative site. Some skepticism about his sweeping assertions is in order (as with his dogmatic claims concerning Shakespeare's alleged atheism).

A Midsummer Night's Dream: Dr. Friedlander's discussion of the themes and characters of A Midsummer Night's Dream displays most of the faults and virtues of his Lear site.

The Tempest: Students can take a basic navigation lesson at TempestNET.

Julius Caesar: Another good student-oriented site is the Julius Caesar Resource Page , which offers a hypertext edition of the play, mini-biographies of the individual characters, historical background on both ancient Rome and Elizabethan England, and a number of other helpful features. Shakespeareans may want to drop by to sample their amusing collection of "Friends, Romans, Countrymen" parodies.

English history: Ten of Shakespeare's plays are based on medieval English history: King John, Richard II, Henry IV (in two parts), Henry V, Henry VI (in three parts), Richard III, and Henry VIII. You can get a brief biography of each king - as well as his portrait - at the Britannia Web site.

Roman history: The great Greek historian Plutarch (46-120 A.D.) was Shakespeare's primary source for his three great Roman plays, Julius Caesar, Antony & Cleopatra, and Coriolanus. His biographical essays on Antony, Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, and Marcus Brutus may be found at the Internet Classics site.

What are some other resources on the Web for Elizabethan drama?

Here you will find the complete dramatic works of Christopher Marlowe. This site also offers a selection of Marlowe's poetry, as well as some of his translations from Ovid and Lucan. Unfortunately, due to copyright restrictions, you can only download the plays a scene at a time. Faust, The Jew of Malta, and the first part of Tamburlaine are also available (in a single file) at the Project Gutenberg site.

Unfortunately, there really isn't a good site for Ben Jonson's dramas. The link above goes to the best available address which offers a good selection of his poetry (including the famous dedication to Shakespeare written for the 1623 Folio). Unfortunately, the texts of the plays (mostly via University of Michigan's Humanities Text Initiative, or HTI) are often rather garbled (e.g., no cast of characters is provided, speakers are often unidentified, the blank verse is poorly formatted, etc.)

Thomas Middleton (1580-1627) may lack the name recognition of some of his more illustrious contemporaries, but his comedies and melodramas still make good reading. Chris Cleary's web page provides the complete texts of a number of Middleton's plays, including dramatis personae and list of scenes, along with extensive footnotes and annotations.

Dr. Larry A. Brown offers The Duchess of Malfi (which one critic described as "among the great creations of the Elizabethan drama, surpassed by none outside Shakespeare") by John Webster (1580? - 1625?).

Elizabethan drama as a whole is surveyed in the Records of Early English Drama (maintained by Abigail Ann Young.)