Publisher's Synopsis
2016 Reprint of 1902 Edition. Volume One Only: A-L. This is the Third Edition, revised and enlarged by Gregor Sarrazin. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. In more than 300 years of Shakespearean scholarship this is the only reference book to have investigated the meaning of every word that Shakespeare wrote. The lifetime work of Professor Alexander Schmidt, this book has long been the indispensable companion for every person seriously interested in Shakespeare, Renaissance poetry and prose of any sort, or English literature. It is really two important books in one. Schmidt's two volume compendium contains every single word that Shakespeare used, not simply words that have changed their meaning since the seventeenth century, but every word in all the accepted plays and the poems. Covering both quartos and folios, it carefully distinguishes between shades of meaning for each word and provides exact definitions, plus governing phrases and locations, down to the numbered line of the Cambridge edition of Shakespeare. There is no other word dictionary comparable to this work. Even more useful to the general reader, however, is the incredible wealth of exact quotations. Arranged under the words of the quotation itself (hence no need to consult confusing subject classifications) are more than 50,000 exact quotations. Each is precisely located, so that you can easily refer back to the plays or poems themselves, if you wish context. Volume Two published separately.
