A Shakespeare Concordance?

[trysail]

Whilst goofing off o'er the last couple of weeks, I picked up and read Bill Bryson's Shakespeare: The World As Stage.

The book is Bryson's contribution to "Eminent Lives, a series of brief biographies by distinguished authors on canonical figures..."

Like nearly everything Bryson has written, it's thoroughly readable and a pleasure. Bryson— unlike so many Shakespeare biographers— is forthright about the fact that we know next-to-nothing about Shakespeare's life. Nonetheless, Bryson did a commendable job with the few facts to hand and produced one hundred ninety-six pages that brought me new information and insight.

I do suffer periodic bouts of intense fascination with Shakespeare; he is ubiquitous. As an example, another book I read during the last weeks' interlude was William Stevenson's account of British intelligence operations during the '30s and World War II, A Man Called Intrepid: The Secret War. Close to the end of the work appears a quotation that is forever seared in my consciousness by my mother's frequent repetition,

"To thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man."​

The line is, of course, from Hamlet.

Then, there is my family connection with the antiquarian book world. As Bryson details for collectors, along with the Gutenberg Bible, a Shakespeare First Folio is among the scarcest, most sought-after works. My temporary residence in Philadelphia brought an acquaintence with the celebrated book dealer A.S.W. Rosenbach whose notoriety was largely due to his success at running First Folios to ground (along with his acquisition of James Joyce's manuscript of Ulysses).

The foregoing has been a roundabout, windy preface to my asking if anyone hereabouts has had experience with Shakespeare concordances?

I have only been able to find two. Bryson lists:

Spevack, Marvin. The Harvard Concordance to Shakespeare.
Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, 1973.​

in his bibliography. I suspect (but do not know) that it is out of print.

I also located John Bartlett's A Complete Concordance to Shakespeare at: http://www.borders.com/online/store...roduct&sku=0312156456&id=2517090#aboutProduct

Comments, thoughts, ideas or suggestions are solicited and welcome.