Review from previous edition Review from previous edition Ought to find a place on every relevant bookshelf Times Literary Supplement the splendid new Oxford Companion ... will prove a true and long-lasting friend to anyone with an interest in Shakespeare ... This Companion will be a valuable first port of call for the research student and for the general reader or playgoer with a particular question in mind. It is also eminently suitable for the browser ... entertains and informs in equal measure. Around the Globe The reference book to which I expect to be referring the most in this year's crop is The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare. Opening such books is like sitting down with a knowledgeable friend. Not a bore or a know-all, but a genuinely well-informed chum. The new Shakespeare has already distracted me for hours. Sunday Times Now this is fun ... plenty of room for teeming fact and teasing marginality. The contributors keep their prose elegant and their tone dry. Plays International Packed with information ... one of the most comprehensive reference works on the Elizabethan author's life, works and times Writers News The most authoritative guide to the literary and theatrical canon that it defined. The Times

Michael Dobson is Professor of Shakespeare Studies and Director of the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, an executive trustee of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, and an honorary governor of the Royal Shakespeare Company: his previous appointments include posts at Oxford, Harvard, the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of London, and he has held fellowships and visiting appointments in California, Sweden and China. His publications include The Making of the National Poet (1992), England's Elizabeth (with Nicola Watson, 2002), Performing Shakespeare's Tragedies Today (2006), and Shakespeare and Amateur Performance (2011). Stanley Wells, CBE, FRSL, is Honorary President, Life Trustee, and former Chairman of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. He was Professor of Shakespeare Studies and Director of the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, from 1988-1997, and is now Emeritus Professor. He is an Honorary Emeritus Governor of the Royal Shakespeare Company. He has been General Editor of the Oxford Shakespeare since 1978 and is General Editor of the Penguin Shakespeare. One of the most distinguished Shakespearian scholars currently working, his publications include The Oxford Dictionary of Shakespeare (1998), Shakespeare: The Poet and his Plays (2001), The Oxford Shakespeare: King Lear (2001), Shakespeare For All Time (2002), Shakespeare & Co (2006), Shakespeare, Sex, and Love (2010), Great Shakespeare Actors (2015), and Shakespeare: A Very Short Introduction (2015). Will Sharpe is a teaching fellow at the University of Birmingham. He contributed a monograph-length study on 'Authorship and Attribution' to the RSC/Palgrave volume William Shakespeare and Others: Collaborative Plays (2013). He has prepared textual commentaries on Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing, and Henry VIII for the New Oxford Shakespeare (2016). Erin Sullivan is a lecturer and fellow at the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham. Her research focuses on Shakespeare and the history of emotions and Shakespeare and cultural celebration. She is co-editor of The Renaissance of Emotion (Manchester, 2015), Shakespeare on the Global Stage (Arden, 2015), and A Year of Shakespeare (Arden, 2015).

Contents ; Foreword ; Preface to the 1st edition ; Preface to the 2nd edition ; Acknowledgements ; Contributors ; Thematic listing of entries ; List of plays ; Note to the reader ; The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare ; Map of British Isles and France in English Histories and Macbeth ; Family tree of the royal family in Shakespeare's English Histories ; Shakespeare's life, works, and reception: a partial chronology, 1564-1999 ; Further reading ; Picture acknowledgements