Scholars (and geeks): prepare to enter the lost productivity zone!

OK, a little break from our ol’ boy Coriolanus, today. And depending on your research geek factor, it could be a long break, just today.

Now, I’ve seen this site before, but I was just reminded of by a good friend (Renee, we love ya!)… the JSTOR Understanding Shakespeare site!

What makes this site so cool? you ask. Well, friends, here’s how it works. You click on a play. It brings up the Folger Library Digital edition of the play. As you look through the play, you’ll find numbers off to the right-hand margin. You might think these are line numbers, but you’d be wrong.

What those numbers represent are the number of scholarly articles in the JSTOR database that quote that line. For example, in Coriolanus Act One, Scene One, when the First Citizen says that Martius has done his military accomplishments to “please his mother” (I.i.37), that line has been cited in 9 articles…click on that “9” and it brings up links to those articles:

• The Common Good and the Necessity of War: Emergent Republican Ideals in Shakespeare’s Henry V and Coriolanus (Rita Banerjee, Comparative Drama, 2006)
• Coriolanus: Shakespeare’s Anatomy of “Virtus” (Phyllis Rackin, Modern Language Studies, 1983)
• The Late Lamenting Wyndham Lewis (Vernon Young, The Hudson Review, 1976)
• The Shakespearean Self-Author (Albert W. Fields, The South Central Bulletin, 1974)
• Women’s Fantasy of Manhood: A Shakespearian Theme (D. W. Harding, Shakespeare Quarterly, 1969)
• Coriolanus (II) (J. C. F. LITTLEWOOD, The Cambridge Quarterly, 1967)
• The Dialectic of Transcendence in Shakespeare’s Coriolanus (Michael McCanles, PMLA, 1967)
• SHAKESPEARE AND THE NEO-CHIVALRIC CULT OF HONOR (Paul N. Siegel, Centennial Review, 1964)
• The “Unco Guid” and Shakespeare’s Coriolanus (William R. Bowden, Shakespeare Quarterly, 1962)

I mean, how freakin’ cool is that.

I know, some of you are saying, “So what? Big deal.” And for some–hell, probably most–of you, you’re right.

But if you’re a scholar, a student, a research, even just an inquisitive geeky mind, this is research nirvana.

Check it out…but don’t say I didn’t warn you of the time-suck rabbit-hole you’re about to enter…