One of the most-used tools for understanding Shakespeare is Alexander Schmidt's Shakespeare Lexicon and Quotation Dictionary, commonly referred to as "the lexicon". For the uninitiated, this book will CHANGE YOUR LIFE. It is a phenomenal tool in finding the exact meaning of most words as they are used in Shakespeare's works.
WHY YOU NEED IT
If you don't know what you're saying, the audience won't know what you're saying! If you are just kinda sure about the meaning of these 400-year-old lines, you won't be telling the story in a specific and clear way, and your audience's experience will suffer. Some of the words in Shakespeare's plays are antiquated, and have fallen out of use, others have changed in meaning over time, and still others were invented by the Bard himself. Nobody just knows this stuff inherently; all classical actors are expected to do a substantial amount of research outside of rehearsal.
WHERE TO FIND THE LEXICON
HOW TO USE IT:
1. Pick the word you want to look up... duh.
2. Hardcopy: Use the appropriate volume (A-M or N-Z) just like a dictionary to find the word you're searching for.
Online: Use the toolbar on the left to find your word (listed alphabetically; this may take a few clicks - see the image below).
Note: if you choose to use the "search" tool in the upper right, be aware that your search will be across many other reference materials, not just the Lexicon, and it may include works by other authors, as the search includes the entire reference database established by Tufts.
Choose the first letter, then the alphabetical group, then the word you're searching for.
...And that's how we get to caddis.
(We still might have to figure out what a riband is, though.)
In both the online and hardcopy versions of the Lexicon, words that can be different parts of speech will be listed separately for each use; you may need to determine whether this is a verb, noun, adjective, etc.
"Female", for example, is shown in two separate entries:
3. Look through the definitions available to find the reference to the play, act, scene, and line for the word you want to define. These are abbreviated, and can take some getting used to. For example, Romeo & Juliet is Rom., Comedy of Errors is Err., Henry VI Part 2 is H6B, and so on. The act number is in Roman Numerals: I, II, III, IV, or V. The scene number will be listed as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc., followed by the line number. Most of the time, the reference material for the line of the play containing the word you are researching will be listed after the definition for that word, as well as most or all of the other instances that word used with the same intended meaning is found throughout the canon.
Notice that "mischief" has two distinct definitions, both of which are listed here. If we were looking up Don John's line "Will it serve for any model to build mischief on?" - from Much Ado About Nothing, Act I, Scene 3, we can see that it is listed with the second definition: "evil done on purpose, harm, injury." Much Ado About Nothing is abbreviated "Ado", along with the act, scene, and line number, which reads "Ado, I, 3, 49". We even get a portion of the line typed out for us in this instance.
Of course, there are many other references you can use in order to get a better grasp on what you're saying, but the Lexicon is a very popular tool that many regard as an industry standard - and now you know how to use it!
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