Apples of Gold — Preparing

You need to know your subject before you can perform it well. In finding out about your literature selection, try these places:

Google.com is always a good place to start your research. Type the title of your piece in quotations (i.e. "The Bells"), and see what sources pop up.
Bartleby.com is a terrific site to get encyclopedic information about authors and literature.
You can even find the complete works of Shakespeare online along with other information resources.
Yahoo indexes online literature resources for high schoolers too.
If you don't understand a word or don't know how to pronounce it, be sure you look it up beforehand at Dictionary.com.