Shakespeare | National Library of Australia (NLA)

Shakespeare

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Collection guide
Italian Drama Collection

1,011 plays and libretti published in Italy between about 1,720 and 1,900 including a number of Italian translations of plays written by French, German and other European dramatists.

Collection guide
Collection guide
Jensen Collection

553 books from the 19th to mid-20th century with a particular strength in botany and gardening, among many other subjects.

Collection guide
Collection guide
Fitzhardinge Collection

About 300 books including incunabula and early editions of classical texts, plus limited edition reprints of celebrated English writers, mostly published in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

Collection guide
Collection guide
French plays (1700–1840)

2457 plays published in France between 1701 and 1840. They include tragedies, comedies, historical dramas, vaudevilles, comic operas and operas.

Collection guide
Collection guide
Pickering Collection

About 440 books published by William Pickering between 1820 and 1854 including reprints of classics and 17th-century Anglican religious works, plus contemporary writers of his time.

Collection guide
Collection guide
Prance Collection

975 books, including many relating to the essayist and poet Charles Lamb and his circle and books by or relating to the poet Edward Thomas.

Collection guide
Collection guide
Sargent Collection

1,066 Japanese books, nearly all published in the 20th century. They mostly relate to Japanese literature and include a large number of novels and also poetry, plays, essays, biographies of writers, literary history and critical works.

Collection guide
event-image-shakespeare2-2025

A. de Paszthory, Portrait of Nellie Stewart as Rosalind in As You Like It, oil on canvas, 1904, https://nla.gov.au/nla.cat-vn3022148; Broadside advertising George Musgrove’s As You Like It, Princess Theatre, Melbourne, Melbourne: Troedel, 1903, https://nla.gov.au/nla.cat-vn107848

Shakespeare on the move: Gold rush to Great War

Join us for the third illustrated Shakespeare lecture and discover the objects and stories that reveal how Shakespeare made landfall in Australia.  

Event
A drawing of William Shakespeare.

Samuel Ireland (etcher), Portrait of William Shakespeare (detail) in W.H. Ireland, Miscellaneous Papers and Legal Instruments Under the Hand and Seal of William Shakespeare, 1796, nla.gov.au/nla.cat-vn482564

Fakespeare: The story of the Vortigern hoax

Dr Kate Flaherty, senior Lecturer in English and Drama at ANU, and actors from Bell Shakespeare uncovered one of the most amusing and successful literary hoaxes of all time.

Event
Video
Two costume designs, one for a man the other for a woman, with annotations. The man's costume features a blue and green shirt with puffy sleeves, a brown vest, boots, a blue hat and an optional blue cloak. The woman's costume is an orange gown with a small headpiece.

Costume and set sketches - Twelfth Night, 1968, from the papers of Kristian Fredrikson, nla.gov.au/nla.obj-3139276048

Kristian Fredrikson costume designs for the plays of William Shakespeare

Explore the crossover of two masters of their crafts with these beautiful sketches and designs.

Blog
To the Reader Shakespeare

Plutarch, The lives of the noble Grecians and Romaines, 1612, (detail), nla.gov.au/nla.cat-vn2403507

Shakespeare the Reader: An Illustrated Lecture with ANU and Bell Shakespeare

See Dr Kate Flaherty and actors from Bell Shakespeare explore the link between the books that inspired Shakespeare and Shakespeare's own work.

Event
Video
Emma Smith Sitting
Shakespeare’s First Folio: From London to Australia and many points in between

Hear Oxford academic Professor Emma Smith, the world’s leading Shakespeare scholar, discuss Shakespeare’s First Folio as part of its 400 year anniversary.

Event
Video

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