UW Libraries - Drama :: Researching Playwrights

Researching Playwrights

Online Catalog

Use the online catalog to do a subject search for the playwright. Remember to type in the last name first and then the first name; otherwise, you will get zero results or false hits.

Subheadings

Use subheadings to further divide your results. Two good subdivisions are:

--Bibliography;
and
--Criticism and Interpretation

For example:

The Bibliography subdivision describes resources that are basically lists of bibliographic citations of resources, sometimes annotated, ie. with descriptions about the resources. The Criticism and Interpretation subdivision lets you know that the resource contains an analysis of the playwright's work, usually in essay form.

Characters are an important part of analyzing a play. Some playwrights have --Character subdivisions.

Subject headings are arranged alphabetically; play titles are interfiled with other subject headings:

Researching Shakespeare

Because so much has been written about Shakespeare, it might be wise to search for subject headings about particular plays. For example, you can search for books about Hamlet.

Steps:

Subject search for Shakespeare's name: Shakespeare William
Highlight and copy the name plus birth/death dates: Shakespeare William 1564 1616
Paste those into a subject search and add "h" to the end: Shakespeare William 1564 1616 h
Note: You may need to type in the first word of the play's title in case the playwright wrote other plays beginning with the same first letter (eg. Macbeth and Much Ado About Nothing)

You'll then get a list of subject headings related to Shakespeare's play, Hamlet

You can do a keyword search for the subject: Shakespeare William and the subject Hamlet but you won't retrieve subject headings, just a list of materials arranged by publishing date.

In the case of a subject like Hamlet, it's probably useful to look at the subheadings rather than doing a keyword search.

Contemporary Playwrights

There may not be entire books devoted to the work of one single playwright but there may be critical essays about that playwright included in a collection. If you've tried a subject search without results, you may want to do a keyword search. For example:

Suzan-Lori Parks
One of the books Recovering the Black female body contains the essay, "Body language: the Black female body and the word in Suzan-Lori Park's The death of the last Black man in the whole entire world" by Yvette Louis.

However, the best places to look for information about contemporary playwrights may be encyclopedias and other reference works and journal and newspaper articles as well as dissertations.

Web Pages

There are, of course, web pages devoted to a number of playwrights. As would be expected, Shakespeare garners the most representation. All caveats about web pages should be applied.

Back to Research Index

Based on Cornell University Libraries'Research Strategy pages.

Drama Library