Reading Room - Textual Questions

Peter Blayney, The First Folio of Shakespeare (1991) – a slim Folger Library pamphlet full of essential information about the great book

Lukas Erne, Shakespeare as Literary Dramatist (2003) – hugely important study questioning the old view that Shakespeare wasn't interested in the publication of his plays

W. W. Greg, The Shakespeare First Folio: its Bibliographical and Textual History (1955) – though modified by half a century's subsequent scholarship, still an invaluable compendium for the serious student of the text

David Scott Kastan, Shakespeare and the Book (2001) – excellent survey of the story of quartos, folios, editions and now hypertext

Laurie Maguire, Shakespearean Suspect Texts: the 'Bad' Quartos and their Contexts (1996) – questions old orthodoxies about 'bad' or 'pirated' texts

Andrew Murphy, Shakespeare in Print: A History and Chronology of Shakespeare Publishing (2003) – comprehensive and magisterial

Richard Proudfoot, Shakespeare: Text, Stage and Canon (2001) – lucid introductory lectures by a textual expert

Ron Rosenbaum, The Shakespeare Wars: Clashing Scholars, Public Fiascoes, Palace Coups (2006) – extensive lay person's introduction to the scholarly disputes over Shakespeare's text

William Shakespeare: A Textual Companion , edited by Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor (1987) – controversial, contested in many particulars, but full of meat; indeed, constitutes the main course of the ' Oxford revolution' in Shakespearean editing

There are hundreds more fine books on Shakespeare, but anyone who reads The RSC Shakespeare: Complete Works from cover to cover and then devours a reasonable proportion of the above will have earned the right to consider themselves an exceptionally highly informed Shakespearean.