Shakespeare Thesaurus - Marvin Spevack

This work attempts to organise and classify the entire Skakespearen vocabulary. It presents the "world" which can be derived from Shakespeare's idiolect and gives an impression of the surrounding Elizabethan world. The perspective is thus not solely personal or literary or linguistic but also historical, sociological and cultural. This classified inventory consists of 37 main groups and 897 subgroups, ranging from the physical world to sense perception to law to religion to time to space. Emphasis is given to such interests as communication and motion, solidarity and warfare. Other topics covered include horses and health, clothes and colours, swords and social structures, earth and education, gout and government, plants and pride. To account for the entire vocabulary, certain groups not normally found in a work of this kind have to be formed. The largest consists of the names of places and persons arranged so as to constitute a map and a pocket history, mythology and onomasticon. Others include malapropisms, oaths, word classes and foreign words.