We don't encourage you to run out to buy all the plays and try to cram yourself full of them before the program starts. You'll have a better summer if you have a good time and plan to work really hard on your reading and writing when you get here.

If you're curious about what you're getting into, we recommend reading the introduction to one of the 'classic' hardbound editions of Shakespeare's works that you'll find in a library. Penguin, Signet, Oxford, Yale, Riverside, and other big publishers have put out complete editions that almost always start with a bit of information about Shakespeare himself, his times (the Renaissance in England, the England of Queen Elizabeth), his life-history (as much as we know of it), his theater, his actors, his social and cultural context. We recommend grazing in the library for an afternoon, picking up this sort of background information.

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