One of my favourite acquisitions of 2013. Duffin has endeavoured here a feat that (weirdly) has not been previously done: collecting the lyrics of EVERY known song performed, referenced, parodied, or alluded to in Shakespeare's canon with, where possible, an original setting or close setting from Elizabethan and Jacobean music.

As a reference, this is already a staggering work, with a dense list of sources at the end that should basically allow any interested party to research the subject comprehensively. And the fact that the book comes with a CD (with a second, independently-released CD completing the set) means that this is a genuinely valuable book.

But it's not just the stuffy academic or ambitious director who will gain something from this. "Shakespeare's Songbook" serves to remind us of how lively and interactive Shakespeare's plays (and most plays of the era) were. As with a modern farce that might include a sing-a-long, or a contemporary play that makes a reference to One Direction, or a sly allusion to Gershwin or ABBA, we must remember how vital and popular Shakespeare's plays were in his time. We are doing a great disservice to his plays to ignore the roughly 200 references that exist to specific songs. By learning this, we get one step closer to reviving the utter vitality of these plays. A ( )

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Got this in London at the Globe Theater. Fun to flip through and plink out tunes on the piano. ( )