Lenz, Carolyn, Ruth Swift, Gayl Green, and Carol Thomas Neely. This contains several essays on various Shakespeare plays. Manly, Lawrence, ed. Shakespeare's Bawdy . Classical and Christian Ideas in English Renaissance Poetry.
Rivers outlines a thorough intellectual background of Elizabethan England.
Shakespeare's Lives . Oxford University Press, 1993. Schoenbaum's is the authoritative biography of Shakespeare. A New Companion to Shakespeare Studies. Cambridge University Press, 1986.