This vital guide to understanding Shakespeare’s language contains over 14,000 words that might be unfamiliar or ambiguous to the modern reader. Each word is glossed with at least one quotation from Shakespeare's texts. The book also contains resources on each of the dramatist's plays, including character lists and diagrams, and more extended discussions on specific aspects of Shakespeare's language, including archaisms and dialects. The Economist calls Shakespeare's Words "magnificent ... a huge work of user-friendly scholarship."