Digging In the Library

For my essay I will be looking into Shakespeare, Medicine, and Insanity.  (Yeah, it's a new topic but I'm actually sticking with this one!)  I think it will be interesting to see what the views were on Insanity during Shakespeare's time, how it was diagnosed, how it was treated, and how those things relate or do not relate to Shakespeare's plays, specifically King Lear, Macbeth, and possibly others.

Here are my awesome sources:

1) Shakespeare A Study and Research Guide Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995. Print.

I found this source in the Humanities Shakespeare section of the Library.  Basically this is a guide to help anyone who is writing anything about Shakespeare.  It provides a lot of cited sources you can use when researching context, genres, groups and movements, and interdisciplinary studies as well as great tips on writing about Shakespeare topics.  This helped me to develop broader ideas since I feel like I was looking for a topic that was super specific, and by doing so, it also gave me resources to look at like historical sources that could help with the context of medicine in Shakespeare's day.

2)  Who's Who and What's What New York: Avenel Books : Crown Publishers, 1978. Print.

This is an awesome resource!  I found it in the Humanities Reference section in the library.  This one gives an index of people and things, showing where these people or things show up in Shakespeare's texts as well as other names or titles that they may hold.  This I think will be a great reference since medicine is referred as many different things, or even alluded to in different ways throughout Shakespeare's plays.  So I was able to see lots of different words I can use to research more into medicine, doctors, physicians, ect.  It also gave me a list of characters to look at that are somehow related to the medicinal topic.

3)  The Essential Shakespeare an Annotated Bibliography of Major Modern Studies New York : Toronto : New York: G.K. Hall ; Maxwell Macmillan Canada ; Maxwell Macmillan International, 1993. Print.

This one is in the Humanities Reference section and it basically gives a whole bunch of bibliographies on different subjects and themes.  This would greatly aid in the research process when looking for resources that are more specific to your topic.  It gives titles and authors as well as a synopses of that resource so you know all about it without reading the entire book or article.  This one has titles in it that are specific to medicine during Shakespeare's time as well as culture during his time that will help me look at those historic backgrounds.  It also gave me information, through synopses of some of the resources, of which plays I should look at that go along with medicine that I didn't know were related such as All's Well that Ends Well and Hamlet.

4) Outline Guide to Shakespeare New York: Century, 1924. Print.

I also found this one in the Humanities Shakespeare section.  This one provides a basic synopses of each of the plays along with information on whether the plays were possibly adapted from other stories, actors that first performed these plays, time lines of how much time each play covers like 3 days or 16 years and how that is divided up by acts and scenes.  It also has an index of songs from the plays (John).  I thought this would be very helpful because some of the plays that were referenced by previous references that I've shared I have not read, and really know nothing about.  So this will help me understand all the basic information surrounding the play so I can know how to use it in my essay and to do further research or certain characters.

5)  Dictionary of Quotations from Shakespeare New York: Dutton, 1992. Print.

This is in the Humanities Reference section too.  It contains an index of topics and all the quotations that are related to that topic, whether it is with that specific word in it or if it is just the overall meaning from the quote.  It is also great because it explains quotations and it gives you new words that correlate with the topic you are looking at.  This will definitely help me because it gives me more plays to look at, as well as quotations that I can use from plays that I may never have read.  

Other great references that I looked at and some that I passed while browsing... probably ones you should look at:

The Riverside Shakespeare Anthology - has lots of bibliographies in the back

Shakespeare in the EFL Classroom - gives themes, questions, and activities to contemplate for a few of the plays.

Shakespeare After Shakespeare - talks about how Shakespeare is now in the popular culture (Erin and Rosemary maybe)

The Weak King Dilemma in the Shakespearean History Play - (Shelise) PR 2992 .K5 M3

Shakespeare in the Changing Curriculum - This one has a chapter about innocence in the students that you are teaching... maybe good for Sarai?  PR 2987 .S48ish (there's lots of similar books in that section)