Tuesday, September 1, 2015

Shakespeare revisited

Okay, so this is the first post in some time. I have made multiple attempts to read the complete works (or at least plays) of Shakespeare and mostly I just end up reading the ones I like/have and then get busy or lose interest.
This time it wasn't a really structured thing, I read Much Ado About Nothing, my favorite play and one that I own. To be fair I own the complete works, it's a text book from the Shakespeare class I took in college. It's huge, I call it "the beast" and it's not all that conducive to sitting and reading, somewhat ironically.
Jumping back from that tangent, I then proceeded to read The Tempest, The Taming of the Shrew, Twelfth Night and A Midsummer Night's Dream. I've read all these plays before and it was nothing new (though I will say Taming of the Shrew troubled me a good deal, I don't know that it has in the past) but it got me thinking about my goal to read the complete works and giving it another go.
I believe the first serious step was making up a list of the plays, I marked the plays that I had read recently and the plays that I have read ever. Some of the plays I decided I have read recently enough that I'm going to count them anyway, others I'm going to read again. For example, I read Julius Caesar in high school but hadn't read it since, so I reread it. I've read Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet within a year or two and I'm not wild about either, so I'm just counting them as read.
I've found that it's easier to read a play when I've either seen it performed live or watched a movie of it and so I'm watching old favorites (Kenneth Branagh's Much Ado) and trying out new movies (the Tempest with Helen Mirren as Prospera and Branagh's Henry V, which is a completely new experience).
The final step that I hope will bring success, is that I'm getting copies of plays from the library when I don't already own them in a smaller format, that way it's easier to read them.
So in addition to what I've already listed, I've also read Hamlet. As You Like It is the next up, I've read it before and watched Branagh's version (highly recommend) but I'm looking forward to reading it again.
Hopefully in a few months I'll still be making progress and will update you on it. Until then, check out the bard's work! I've been amazed to realize how much of our phrases, word and language come from him and his work as I've been reading and rereading.