Whether you’re studying Shakespeare at school or university, or just want to know more about his life and works, let Auckland City Libraries help! On this page, you will find general introductory material on Shakespeare and his works. Follow the links located on the left-hand side of your screen for other Shakespearean topics.
Books
Shakespeare Survey Published annually, this series presents collected essays on many different Shakespearean topics. Examples include Shakespeare and Language, Shakespearean Tragedy and Shakespearean Stages.
Shakespearean Criticism Each volume in this 10-volume set focuses on 4 to 5 of Shakespeare’s works, providing excerpts from key critical essays. Background to each work – its original sources, when it was written and so on – is also given.
The Annotated Shakespeare The complete works of Shakespeare, published with useful annotations and illustrations.
Shakespeare A to Z A good one-volume introduction to Shakespeare’s life and times. It includes synopses of all of Shakespeare's plays by act and scene, along with sketches of all of his characters.
eBooks
CliffsNotes (study guides) and CliffsComplete Shakespeare titles are available to members of Auckland City Libraries as eBooks. There is no charge to use these titles, and they can be downloaded for 8 hours at a time.
CliffsNotes provide critical essays, analysis of text, character maps and reading lists.
The CliffsComplete Shakespeare series provides the full text of each play, along with plot summaries, notes and definitions, character maps, review questions and illustrations.
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Databases
Arts Academic Research Library (Proquest) - A selection of international art journals and magazines, many of which are full-text. Topics include photography, dance, theatre, film, music, art history, and architecture. Search (needs a personal membership barcode and PIN)
Biography Resource Centre - An international database of biographical information about 220,000 people from throughout history and across all subject areas. Search (needs a personal membership barcode and PIN)
Ebsco Academic Search Premier - The world's largest academic multi-disciplinary database, Academic Search Premier provides full text for nearly 4,500 journals, including full text for more than 3,600 peer-reviewed titles. Search (needs a personal membership barcode and PIN)
Literature Resource Centre - Provides biographies of literary figures, book reviews, bibliographies, critical essays, links to websites and timeline events. Search (needs a personal membership barcode and PIN)
Oxford Reference Online - Contains a wealth of facts, figures, definitions, and translations. It includes more than 100 quick reference titles as well as over 50,000 in-depth, scholarly articles from titles in the Oxford Companions series, plus all 20,000 quotations from the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. Search (needs a personal membership barcode and PIN)
Student Resource Center - Aimed at high school and university students, this database includes primary documents, background and topical essays, biographies, critical analyses and full-text magazine articles. Search (needs a personal membership barcode and PIN)
Websites
About.com - Another of the About.com sites with everything you want to know about Shakespeare.
Enotes - Contains thousands of pages of content on the life and work of the world's greatest author, including eNotes to more than 20 titles and modern English translations of several plays.
Internet Public Library - Shakespeare - This is another great site, which includes his comedies, histories, poetry and tragedies, Shakespeare links on the web, and criticisms.
Project Gutenberg - Lets you read Shakespeare at the click of a mouse!
Shakespeare Resource Centre - An all-in-one guide to Shakespeare, this site provides biographical details, synopses of his works, information about Shakespeare’s language and use of grammar, details of the Globe Theatre and Elizabethan England, and the authorship debate. A useful reading list is given, and each section provides valuable links to other selected sites.
Mr William Shakespeare and the Internet - Aiming to be “a complete annotated guide to the scholarly Shakespeare resources available on the Internet”, this site contains almost every Shakespearean link you can imagine – full-text plays and poetry; the authorship problem; biographical links; the Globe Theatre and Elizabethan theatre; criticism; and educational tools. A timeline of Shakespeare’s life includes a family tree and a biography quiz.
ShakespearePicture.com - Another all-in-one site which provides all manner of information on William Shakespeare - including biography, complete online works of his plays and sonnets, critical essays on selected plays, study guides, and links to other resources.
ShakespeareHigh.com - Designed for school students and teachers, this site provides information on reading Shakespeare, guides to various plays, a photo album, Internet links, FAQs, and a discussion zone where students chat about…Shakespeare!
absoluteshakespeare - The essential William Shakespeare resource with Shakespeare's plays, sonnets and poems. Study Shakespeare with plot summaries, essays, character analyses, quotes, biography, pictures, timeline, trivia, the Globe Theatre and links.
Complete Works of William Shakespeare Online - Full-text editions of Shakespeare’s plays and poetry from MIT.
Videos and Audio books
Auckland City Libraries holds videos, DVDs and Books Out Loud versions of Shakespeare's plays and sonnets. To find these items, search our catalogue using the Advanced Search option.
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