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