Shakespeare Criticism Reading List

a list of readings for the Shakespeare portion of my PhD Project, selected to gain sharper insight and understanding into the meaning behind the texts; Shakespeare’s approach to writing gender, race, and politics; and exploring the fascinating and odd persisting argument that Shakespeare was not, in fact, Shakespeare.

General Criticism and Analysis

• This is Shakespeare by Emma Smith

• Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare by Stephen Greenblatt

• Hamlet in Purgatory by Stephen Greenblatt

• Shakespeare After All by Marjorie Garber

Shakespeare and Politics

• Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics by Stephen Greenblatt

• Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us about Our Past and Future by James Shapiro

• The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606 by James Shapiro

Women in Shakespeare

• Women of Will: The Remarkable Evolution of Shakespeare's Female Characters by Tina Packer

• Juliet: The Life and Afterlives of Shakespeare's First Tragic Heroine by Sophie Duncan

Shakespearean Theatre

• Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent by Dame Judy Dench

• Shakespeare's London Theatreland: Archaeology, History and Drama by Julian Bowsher

• Shakespeare's Globe: A Theatrical Experiment edited by Christie Carson and Farah Karim-Cooper

• Globe: Life in Shakespeare’s London by Catharine Arnold

Shakespeare and Race

• Black Shakespeare: Reading and Misreading Race by Ian Smith

• White People in Shakespeare: Essays on Race, Culture and the Elite (Shakespeare and Social Justice) edited by Arthur L Little

• Shakespeare’s White Others by David Sterling Brown

• The Great White Bard: How to Love Shakespeare While Talking about Race by Farah Karim-Cooper
  

Shakespeare, the Man

• Shakespeare’s Wife by Germaine Greer

• 30 Great Myths about Shakespeare by Laurie Macguire and Emma Smith

• Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies: How Doubting the Bard Became the Biggest Taboo in Literature by Elizabeth Winkler

• Shakespeare by Another Name: The Life of Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, the Man Who Was Shakespeare by Mark Anderson

• Will in the World by Stephen Greenblatt

• Contested Will by James Sharpiro

• Shakespeare's borrowed feathers: How early modern playwrights shaped the world's greatest writer by Darren Freebury-Jones

• 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare by James Shaprio

• In Shakespeare's Shadow: A Rogue Scholar's Quest to Reveal the True Source Behind the World's Greatest Plays by Michael Blanding

Shakespeare Courses by The Teaching Company/The Great Courses

• How to Read and Understand Shakespeare by Marc C Conner

• William Shakespeare: Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies by Peter Saccio

• Shakespeare’s Tragedies by Clarie R Kinney

• Shakespeare: The Word and the Action by Peter Saccio