Modern Shakespeare scholarship owes a huge debt to generations of researchers and archivists who assembled what little we know about the Bard and his life. Those researchers and archivists include Charles and Hulda Wallace, who painstakingly scoured thousands of uncatalogued documents at London’s Public Record Office, searching for references to Shakespeare and his circle. True masters of archival research, the Wallaces found priceless Shakespearean court documents and other invaluable records.
Apart from Charles and Hulda and their peers, I acknowledge the more recent scholars and librarians who made Shakespeare’s Library possible. Major documentary and textual sources are identified in the ‘Further reading’ section. Full source notes are available at my author site (stuartkells.com). For practical help and guidance I am also indebted to the custodians of the Bodleian Library, the British Library, the Folger Shakespeare Library, the State Library of New South Wales, the State Library of Victoria, the New York Public Library, and the libraries of Meisei University, Monash University and the University of Melbourne.
I also gratefully acknowledge the support and advice of Fiona, Thea and Charlotte Kells, Don and Sheila Drummond, Elizabeth and Louise Lane, Bill Leslie, Wallace and Joan Kirsop, Jacky Ogeil, John O’Donnell, Lorna Lawford, Maurice Hanratty, Lisa Ehrenfried, Ed Schofield, Charles and Mary Stitz, Richard Overell, and the teams at Text Publishing and Counterpoint Press, particularly Michael Heyward, Penny Hueston, Alaina Gougoulis, Khadija Caffoor, W. H. Chong, Lucy Ballantyne, Jane Watkins, Anne Beilby, Jack Shoemaker, Alisha Gorder, Wah-Ming Chang, Jennifer Alton and Yukiko Tominaga.