Author:William Shakespeare

This is an ISFDB Bibliographic Comments page for the author (or artist or editor) William Shakespeare. This page may be used for bibliographic comments or extended notes about the author, or discussion on how to the author's works are to be recorded . The link above leads to the ISFDB summary record for William Shakespeare. Please use Bio:William Shakespeare for a biographical sketch of this person. To discuss what should go on this page, use the talk page. For more on this and other header templates, see Header templates.

What's In: The Shakespeare Bibliographic page includes lots of excerpts and abridgments of works of his, but these works, in general, can't stand on their own as speculative fiction. E.g., these include short quotes referring to ghosts, demons, etc., but don't include such characters in any substantive way. The only works which we think of as having substantive speculative fiction are:

• Hamlet (the ghosts);
• Macbeth (the witches);
• Tempest (the spirit Ariel, trapped in a tree by a witch, released by the magician Prospero, and serving him);
• A Winter's Tale (Hermione dies, but is resurrected in a statue of her); and
• A Midsummer Night's Dream (fairies throughout).

Only these works will be attempted to be included here in a somewhat complete manner. Of these, only Hamlet and A Midsummer Night's Dreams were published as independent plays prior to the 18th century, and the bibliography includes all of those publications as Chapterbooks.

What's Borderline/Out: In the culture of Shakespeare's time, the concept of a ghost coming to you in a dream to threaten you, to give you warning, etc., was not considered "supernatural", but was a more-or-less expected phenomena. As such, we generally require more than such an appearance to justify cataloging a Shakespearean play as "supernatural" or "speculative". Plays of his which fit this category, or are otherwise "borderline" are listed below. These are not included in this database.
Cymbeline includes borderline supernatural elements. As the Wikipedia plot summary puts it:

"In jail, Posthumus sleeps, while the ghosts of his dead family appear to complain to Jupiter of his grim fate. Jupiter himself then appears (in the dream) in thunder and glory to assure the others that destiny will grant happiness to Posthumus and Britain." We do not count, as supernatural, dreams of things which are supernatural.

Richard III: Richard's older brother Clarence has a dream in which he sees "wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl, inestimable stones, unvalued jewels ... scattered in the bottom of the sea" with some of the jewels in the skulls of the dead. He then imagines dying and being tormented by the ghosts of his father-in-law and brother-in-law. Before the final battle scene, Richard's sleep is haunted by the ghosts of those he has murdered. In both cases, though, these are explicitly dream scenes, hence do not qualify as "supernatural" to us.
In Pericles, the hero and his wife, Thaisa, are separated, each thinking the other dead. Thaisa has become a priestess in the temple of Diana, and at the end the goddess Diana appears in a dream to Pericles, telling him to come to the temple where he finds Thaisa. Again, this happens explicitly in a dream, but because the dream has knowledge that cannot be Pericles', it can be interpreted as supernatural.
In Julius Caesar, the ghost of Caesar appears to Brutus, but this is a little too close to "metaphorical" to clearly qualify as supernatural. However, the ghost does offer a prophecy, which is ignored, and comes true. That makes it at least borderline supernatural.
Henry VI, Part 2: "The play begins with the marriage of King Henry VI of England to the young Margaret of Anjou. However, the wife of the Duke of Gloucester, has designs on the throne, and has been led by an agent of Suffolk to dabble in necromancy. She summons a spirit and demands it reveal the future to her, but its prophecies are vague and before the ritual is finished, she is interrupted and arrested." This is probably sufficient supernatural contents that this play should be included in our coverage.

Collections: The "Collections" shown as "Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies" are what are traditionally referred to as "First Folio", "Second Folio", "Third Folio", and "Fourth Folio". These correspond to all collections of Shakespeare's plays up through 1685. For these works, we include only a partial contents list, limited to those five works shown above.

Bibliographic Status: The ISFDB bibliography currently includes all dated publications of these works as listed in WorldCat up through 1699 except:

• Non-English editions;
• Versions in books by the title "Dryden's Plays", which are the alterations of Shakespeare's plays by John Dryden;
• Continuing work on chapterbook versions of Macbeth from 1675-1699.