Shakespeare's Words: A Glossary and Language Companion

The book showed up in great shape and well packaged. Has everything you need to understand Shakespeare's words. If you have ever struggled to figure out what that line meant when it was written this book will help you.

This glossary of Shakespeare's words has helped me through two literature courses. I appreciate the indepth elements of this glossary.

There are more than just words defined in this excellent tome. The author includes synopses of the plays, interesting notes about terms used for family members, and much, much more. You could not ask for a better reference book or resource about Shakespeare.

This is mainly a glossary, including many words which are in common usage today and don't really need a gloss. The sort of thing you get in the footnotes of an annotated edition. There are nice articles on more global subjects, such as plotlines and patterns of usage. I would have liked to see more of the latter.

This is a very helpful tool when reading Shakespeare. For those of you who enjoy the "No Fear" series, I recommend this guide to you because not all words have one simple definition, and paraphrasing Shakespeare is not the same as an exploration of terms in their literary and historical context. Another nice feature is the collection of terms in the back of the book, broken into multiple categories based on historical significance. For example, there is a section of terms devoted to the names of weapons mentioned in the plays. I also like the font used, it's very readable. Many definitions reference the act and scene in plays where the terms are used and in many cases how the term was used in the context of that scene. Although I enjoy the "No Fear" series, I am finding it more enjoyable to read the original text with this book on the side. I also recommend the new Spark Notes Shakespeare book that contains analysis of ALL plays and sonnets.

As an actor who performs Shakespeare all of the time, I highly recommend this book as an invaluable resource. It's less expensive than the OED and more up-to-date than the Onions' Glossary, although both have their own strengths. The foreword alone has helped me gain a better understanding of the way we analyze and interpret Shakespeare. If you're a fellow Shakespearean actor, an English student, or someone who would like to gain a better understanding of Shakespeare's works, check it out!

This resource has become indispensable when I sit down to read a play or preparing a role. It is thorough and easy to use. My one quibble comes from placement of the page numbers on the upper inside corners of the pages. What? the Upper outside corners list the first and last words of the page, but the page numbers are buried by the spine. This makes finding something by page number (like one of the many interesting and useful sidebars) rather inconvenient, as one cannot simply flip through at the bottom outside corner to find the page quickly. I hope the authors will consider changing this in future editions. But this one tiny flaw in no way negates the massive usefulness of the information and scholarship this book contains!

Only of moderate use since it does not include pronunciations.