CUP's Cambridge Shakespeare online resource

In one of Cambridge University Press's (CUP) latest endeavours, Cambridge Shakespeare provides students and teachers with online access to the complete works of Shakespeare, as well as integrated critical material. The updated edition of each play or essay can be viewed online or downloaded.

As an English Literature graduate who finished studying a few years ago, my ears pricked up at the news that the material I spent most of my university career lugging round in a rucksack or trawling the internet for is now neatly gathered onto one online platform.

In terms of the critical material, this will be particularly useful. Users have access to New Cambridge Shakespeare: The Early Quartos series, Shakespeare in Production series, a new and exclusive version of Emma Smith's The Cambridge Shakespeare Guide, over 300 essays in The Cambridge Guide to the World of Shakespeare, plus more.

Students can dip in and out of critical essays, searching for specific quotes or keywords, then easily search the text itself, without having to use a different online resource or leaf through a library copy of the play. While academic databases like JSTOR do already exist, Cambridge Shakespeare has the advantage of being solely dedicated to one playwright, and, more importantly, integrating the play text itself with critical analysis. Users can switch between explanatory, performance-based, and textual notes, making this a flexible and transferable resource for a variety of learning needs.

Although aimed largely at undergraduates, graduates, and scholars, CUP is hoping to attract schools wishing to offer access to sixth form students. A Level Drama students will find the performance-based notes useful when developing directorial and performance approaches on set Shakespeare texts.

The platform itself is relatively user-friendly, with a helpful introductory video and clear hyperlinks to different sections. Once through to a new page, however, it's not hugely easy to find one's way back to the previous menu, and it took a while for me to discover that heading for ‘Collections & Series’ was probably my best bet for returning to the Cambridge Shakespeare homepage.

Selecting a specific play takes you through to a landing page, which gives you the option of reading the play in full, downloading related essays, watching performance videos, or viewing archived images. These multimedia resources curated by the Folger Shakespeare Library are incredibly useful, and would help bring a play to life, especially for a sixth form student.

At a reduced price of £550 each year for a school subscription, departments would have to consider how much use students and teachers would get out of it, and while I would always favour a hard copy when sitting down to read a play cover to cover, this is an invaluable resource for study, offering students and teachers in-depth insight into the worlds and works of Shakespeare.

www.cambridge.org/core/what-we-publish/collections/cambridge-shakespeare

Email library.sales@cambridge.org (UK and Rest of World) or online@cambridge.org (Americas). Free institutional trials are available.