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Searching Page Banner (C)1997 Terry A. Gray

Shakespeare & Internet Search Tools & Resources

Introduction

After the specifically Shakespearean sites, I have provided a guide to the more general best search tools on the web. Regarding these, I have grouped them into search engines and subject catalogs, though some sites are a mixture of both. A true search engine attempts to build indices to "all that is out there" via automated information gathering programs known as robots or spiders, and then lets you search the indices by keyword(s). The best allow sophisticated searching using booleans, proximity operators and logical groupings of search terms. The size and quality of the indices vary greatly, and a search on the same term(s) using different engines invariably returns different results. The best search engine by far is Google.

I have also included links to the web pages of well known libraries and archives where important parts of the collections are dedicated to Shakespeare and Renaissance studies.

Shakespeare
Search
Tools
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  • Open Source Shakespeare - concordance, keyword and advanced searching, statistics, the text of the plays, find characters, and a search of all the poetry as well.  Remarkable.  Based on the Globe edition of 1864.
  • Shakespeare Searched.  A great new search tool from Clusty Labs that permits searching by character or work, sponsored by the Folger Shakespeare Library.  The version of the plays and sonnets searched is, as usual, the complete Moby Shakespeare.
  • The Works of the Bard site. It allows for searching of all the works, or a selected work, and the filtering and selection features actually work.
  • A different sub-categorized approach is used at the RhymeZone.
  • A Shakespeare Condordance.
  • Lookup in C. T. Onions, A Shakespeare Glossary (based on the volume published in 1911, Clarendon Press), from the Perseus Project, Tufts University.
  • Lookup in Alexander Dyce, A General Glossary to Shakespeare's Works (based on the volume published in 1904, Dana Estes Co.), from the Perseus Project, Tufts University.
  • Lookup in Alexander Schmidt, Shakespeare Lexicon and Quotation Dictionary (based on the volume published in 1902, Georg Reimer), from the Perseus Project, Tufts University.
  • Within the same class falls the University of Toronto's Early Modern English Dictionaries Database Search Utility.
  • To search just the poetry, you may use the Shakespearean Poetry Search, and excellent specialized search engine. Unfortunately it does not return line numbers.
  • A specialized Hamlet search called Hyperhamlet.  A truly amazing site from the University of Basel.  ""Hyperhamlet" is a new project at the University of Basel, a database that collects and orders references to Hamlet in all areas of culture.  Who quoted Hamlet? Which passages were most popular when? Etc. It is based on the conviction that we need a cultural history of Shakespeare's plays, and that in studying the status and the meaning of a play we should not entirely rely on criticism and performance history." 
  • DEEP (Database of Early English Playbooks) is a searchable database "...of Early English Playbooks allows scholars and students to investigate the publishing, printing, and marketing of English Renaissance drama..."
  • First Folio of Shakespeare Search, prepared by Charlton Hinman, published by The Oxford Text Archive, hosted by the University of Chicago.  "The First Folio of Shakespeare, prepared by Charlton Hinman, is based on copies of the 1623 First Folio in the Folger Shakespeare Library."

Related Search
Tools
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Google Book Search

Google Scholar

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Reference Works
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This section contains facsimile electronic versions of books, mostly scanned books from Google Book Search (GBS) or the Internet Archive (IA) that are useful in researching Shakespearean or more general English and Renaissance historical and literary topics.
  • Dr. Thomas Fuller, The History of the Worthies of England, 1662.  Fuller's delightful Worthies was first published in 1662 in a single folio volume, and is available in a 3-volume reprint from 1840 edited by  P. Austin Nuttall:  Vol. I, Vol. II, Vol. III.

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Metasites
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Libraries
& Archives
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Shakespeare
Blogs
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See also Renaissance blogs.

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©1995-2009 Terry A. Gray
Last modified 11/14/12
Do not copy or reuse these materials without permission.