WebWatch-Shakespeare
By Anthony Aycock -- Library Journal, 6/1/2001
CLICKING ON THE WEB... William Shakespeare is a crowd pleaser. Whether that crowd consists of Elizabethan tradesmen or Harvard postmodernists, Shakespeare entertains his audiences while challenging them to think about humanity. With the advent of the Internet, new generations of Shakespeare enthusiasts can read the plays in digital form, take a virtual tour of the Globe Theatre, or see the house where Shakespeare was born. Scholars can see digital images of manuscripts, while enthusiasts can seek out festivals and even parodies. The greatest writer in English is busier than ever.
People have written about Shakespeare for centuries, and so the web sites reviewed cover a lot of ground. The three gateway sites each offer unique properties and approaches. Alternate sites zero in on certain aspects of Shakespeare studies, including collected works, history and criticism, the authorship debate, and Shakespeare-related organizations.
MR. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE AND THE INTERNET
daphne.palomar.edu/shakespeare
Date Visited: 5/3/01
Developer/Provider: Terry Gray
While the annotations on this guide to Shakespeare resources are terse and occasionally bland, Terry Gray, an academic technology supervisor at Palomar College (San Marcos, CA), offers items that are not found via other gateways. Some of these are linked from the main page; others appear under the What's News link.
On the consistent navigation bar at left are categories including Works, Life & Times, Criticism, etc. Best Sites is an index-within-an-index and a good place to start. Life & Times has biographies and an excellent genealogy, as well as items on the authorship debate (see below). Renaissance leads to material on authors who were contemporaries of Shakespeare. The Theatre section goes beyond the Globe itself to discuss Elizabethan costumes, music, and dance.
Criticism includes links to discussion lists and newsgroups such as humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare. Although newsgroups are often dominated by time-wasters, this one attracts Shakespeare scholars. Other Sites serves up whimsical sites and links to Shakespeare merchandise. From the main page, click on What's News to read about new Shakespeare materials and current events, such as the upcoming World Shakespeare Congress.
At times, the coverage of Mr. William Shakespeare and the Internet is overspecialized, which can intimidate new searchers. However, the uniqueness of this site defies argument. Though the "Falstaff Is Good Beer" essay and the Shakespeare Insult Generator are reasons to groan, there is much to marvel at—such as the full-text representation of Nicholas Rowe's 1709 piece, Some Acount of the Life &c. of Mr. William Shakespear, which is linked from the main page and from Life & Times.
The Bottom Line: This site has something for everyone—scholars, English students, or everyday people who are curious about the Bard. It balances a rich array of links between obscure and accessible materials.
SHAKESPEARE ONLINE
Date Visited: 5/2/01
Developer/Provider: Amanda Mabillard
Offering neither scholarly documents nor famous works of criticism, Shakespeare Online focuses instead on general study materials. The main page is organized like a news site with headers like New This Week and Hot Picks in a column on the right. These items change as new links are emphasized, but that means they are topical, not whimsical. At the bottom of the main page are more links to individual essays, most written by site administrator Mabillard, who is working on a book about Shakespeare.
Useful resources include an Elizabethan glossary and a pronunciation guide to Shakespearean names, both linked from the main page. On the left of each page is the directory, which links to Plays, Poems, Biography, Essays, and more. However, the information in these categories is not scholarly—e.g., the plays have no footnotes or other commentary. Readers who want the perks of a search engine or Next Scene, Previous Scene links within the text should use sites that focus on complete works (see below). The links to Plots, Topics, and a Shakespeare Quiz make this site an excellent starting point for general interest researchers, while the Ask Us link accepts e-mail questions, unlike Mr. William Shakespeare and the Internet. The Videos link leads to paragraph-length reviews of film versions of the plays.
Many links in this site connect to segments of the About.com section devoted to Shakespeare, which Mabillard also wrote. However, Shakespeare Online is an enhancement; it's easier to use and contains less advertising. Still, the site tends to exclude discussions of Shakespeare's contemporaries or of the Elizabethan era.
The Bottom Line: Though there is little attempt to put Shakespeare in a historical context, Shakespeare Online offers essays and study materials whose informal presentation favors students and other newcomers to Shakespeare.
ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA ON SHAKESPEARE
www.britannica.com/eb/ article?eu=117519
Date Visited: 5/3/01
Developer/Provider: Britannica.com
Britannica.com's well-organized and thorough article on William Shakespeare frees the user from all the searching and clicking associated with other gateway sites. Instead of hashing out their own approach to Shakespeare, users can read a prepared narrative aimed at college-educated readers.
The most helpful feature is an outline of the article that appears at the bottom of every page. Each level of the outline links to the corresponding section of the article. (Ignore the sponsor links at bottom.) Beginning with Shakespeare the Man and concluding with lists of items for Additional Reading, the article covers old and new trends of interpretation of Shakespeare's life and work. Individual plays are discussed as well as Shakespeare's use of language, his influence as a poet, and the authorship debate (see sites below).
The web version offers several advantages over print. Certain words within the text link to other Britannica articles. Links at the right of each page include Images (e.g., digital photos of Shakespeare's house in Stratford) and Multimedia (e.g., video of scenes from plays like Hamlet and Macbeth). The Maps link offers only one map—England circa 1600.
The Bottom Line: Encyclopedia Britannica on Shakespeare follows the useful format of an encyclopedia, condensing the content of dozens of sites and reference works into one article. Other gateways provide more options and authorial voices.
Alternate SitesBartlett's Familiar Quotations
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
Shakespeare Resources
etext.lib.virginia.edu/shakespeare
Several "complete works" sites with full-text access to the plays and poems are available, but The Complete Works of William Shakespeare is one of the best. Aimed at those who read Shakespeare for fun or general study, it mirrors the well-respected MIT Shakespeare Homepage but has a better search engine. Shakespeare Resources is part of the University of Virginia Electronic Text Center, which contains some 51,000 documents in over 12 languages. Aimed at scholars who want to analyze textual features (e.g., watermarks or a scribe's handwriting), the site offers numerous Shakespeare texts, including early quarto editions of the plays, 17th-century playhouse promptbooks, and the complete First Folio of 1623. Bartlett's Familiar Quotations helps those who want a snippet of Shakespeare to grace a greeting card or to introduce a speech. Click on the title of a play to read quotations from that source.
Early Modern Literary Studies
www.shu.ac.uk/emls/emlshome.html
Shakespeare's Globe Research Database
Shakespeare in Connotations: A Journal for Critical Debate
www.anglistik.uni-muenster.de/Connotations/shakespe.htm
Shakespeare's Globe Research Database is divided into three main sections: the research database; the story of the original Globe Theatre; and information about the construction of the New Globe Theatre in London. The latter two sections offer sketches and photos, though photos are too small to see easily. Under New Globe, Virtual Reality Images offers a nice photo tour. The e-journal Early Modern Literary Studies offers full-text articles on a number of English Renaissance authors; use the search engine to find Shakespeare. Click on Discussion Groups to see links to the message archives of several academic mailing lists. Another e-journal, Connotations: A Journal for Critical Debate, provides a separate index to Shakespeare-related articles, a few of which are available in full text. Most Shakespeare gateway sites link to such journals.
Shakespeare Authorship
www.clark.net/pub/tross/ws/will.html
Shakespeare Oxford Society
The Shakespeare Resource Center: The Authorship Debate
The controversy over who really wrote the works of Shakespeare is a fascinating subset of Shakespeare criticism. Shakespeare Oxford Society dishes up propaganda for the case of the Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere, as the real author. The Library link leads to articles that aggrandize Oxford, and the Bookstore link includes pro-Oxford books. The answer to the Oxford site is Shakespeare Authorship, in which two traditional scholars present a more convincing series of essays explaining why the actor William Shakespeare of Stratford is the true author of the plays and poems. Readers can click on any level of the site outline to go to a specific essay or read the essays in sequence. The Shakespeare Resource Center: The Authorship Debate focuses mainly on de Vere and two others who have been credited with Shakespeare's work—Francis Bacon and Christopher Marlowe. However, Marlowe and de Vere died long before Shakespeare's later plays were written, and Bacon was too prolific as an essayist and philosopher to have had time for playwriting. Annotated links are at bottom. This is part of a larger site of Shakespeare links.
Folger Shakespeare Library
The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust
Yahoo! Shakespeare Festivals dir.yahoo.com/Arts/Humanities/Literature/Authors/Playwrights/Shakespeare__William__1564_1616_/Shakespeare_Festivals
Located in Washington, DC, the Folger Shakespeare Library houses the most extensive collection of Shakespeare materials in the United States. Its web site provides a web-based catalog and information about performances and programs at the library. In England, the resources of The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust serve scholars and sightseers alike. Links on the right side of the page include Shakespeare's Houses, About Shakespeare, and Records. Click on Records to see descriptions of the historical documents that the trust owns. Finally, the Yahoo! Shakespeare Festivals directory provides links to the many festivals of the bard, including production schedules and theater reviews.
Anthony Aycock (aaycock@SinklerBoyd.com) is a law librarian with Haynsworth Sinkler Boyd, P.A., Columbia, SC
