Phew, I finally finished this. It only took... What, ten months?

This edition was remarkable in that it not only included all of the plays and sonnets, but also different folio versions or stage versions of the same. I found that redundant and interesting by turn, depending on the play (and how many changes there were). I did have some trouble with the formatting, but the plays overall were presented very well.

I fell in love with "Titus Andronicus" all over again and re-affirmed my dislike for "Romeo and Juliet" (grow up, Romeo), and discovered a few new plays.

I listed the plays individually on Goodread in order to write my responses to each one. This volume stands for Shakespeare's sonnets and poems.

And what is to be said? He's brilliant. That's all.

Would I read all the works again? Only a few sonnets. I have a "never again" list of plays. But I plan to keep reading my favorites.

This edition is frill-free. No introductions, no illustrations, no footnotes, no gloss. I liked that. It was good to come to the bard with my wits, such as they are, and a dictionary if needed. The text is in two columns and sometimes overflows with a [bracket on the line above.

For this project, I listened to the excellent Arkangel recordings as I read. It spoiled me; for the few works where no recordings were available, I scrounged up a Librivox audio. In the other direction, the few times I listened to a play in the car without the text, I went back and read/listened.

Someone (http://www.shicho.net/38/stats/38word...) assembled a word count for the plays: 928,913. Good words. Funny words. Grievous words. Meh words. Double entendres. Uplifting words. Beautiful words.

This project, now completed, has been a benediction.

And so my hypothesis is wrong. I was going to say that my Yale Shakespeare makes Bottom's Dream look like kiddie=play. But, no. Only 1517 pages. Two column. But it is BIG. FAT and TALL and THICK. .....BUT, you'll notice that the 406 editions of the Complete Shakespeare as listed on gr have garnered a total of 45,434 Ratings & 742 Reviews. In other words, there are more people who have read ALL of Shakespeare than are dreamt of in your dreams of slender volumes. Bottom's Dream ain't so bad.....

. I've been watching the old BBC An Age of Kings. For those who don't know, this is an old BBC series of Shakespeare's history cycle from Richard II though to Richard III. It has a young Sean Connery as Hotspur and Tom Hardy as Henry V. Judi Dench is there as is Angela Baddley (Mrs. Bridges from Upstairs, Downstairs. It got me thinking about the timeless of Shakespeare.
Why does everyone on the planet read Shakespeare? Why does the Bard's work appear on stage, in film, on television? Why does his work inspire other stories? Why can his work be placed in almost any context and still be good (okay, Julius Caesar set in Panama didn't work, but that was the smoky cap guns).

Perhaps the answer to the above questions is that Stratford-Upon-Avon needed a good tourist draw. No, of course not. It is because Shakespeare is da bomb.

There is something for everyone in Shakespeare. There is love in R&J or any of the comedies. There is murder in several plays. There is family relationships constantly being examined such as in Lear and Hamlet. There are thousands, if not millions, of dirty jokes. And don't forget the sonnet that is only about sex. Shakespeare was a beautiful poet who had a really perverted sense of humor sometimes. I half agree with one of my professors, Titus just might be Shakespeare's attempt at comedy, trying to mock the revenge tradition. It does, as the Reduced Shakespeare Company has shown, make a really good cooking show.

I personally find the less well known plays to be the better ones. I love Tony and Cleo. I love Much Ado. Even King John has its high points It is in lesser known plays that the average reader can discover gems. It’s true that Hamlet and the other big plays are wonderful, brilliant, but the reader should also play attention to the others, the ones that haven’t been talked to death. Because it is in those, that in many ways, the reader can reach Shakespeare. If you know what I mean.

It’s true that the Bard has had some misses. I don’t think anyone truly, really knows what he was doing with Trolius and Cressida, though I have a soft spot for that play. I read The Phoenix and the Turtle but can’t remember it very well.

But Shakespeare is still da bomb.

The important thing to remember about Shakespeare is that he wasn't meant to be read, but meant to be seen, to be heard. The plays work best when they come off the page, either though performance or simply reading aloud. It also helps to have a working knowledge of the Bible and mythology.

I binge-read Shakespeare as research for my novel Shakespeare's Twin Sister. And this edition was particularly good for that.

Rereading Shakespeare is like playing a piece of music. The pleasure grows as you learn it, until you can watch it in your mind without looking at the words, like you can play the music without looking at the score and then can hear the music without playing it.

Not enough dragons.

n  n

It all ended so fast. I feel like it's just January, but look at the calendar - it's December! You surely remember earlier in the year when I said I had put a challenge for myself. This was the Shakespeare Challenge, in which I had to read all the works known by William Shakespeare. Guess what? I finally read them all!

It started in January. I was bored and I didn't know what to read. One day I went to the library and checked out a book that contained 4 of Shakespeare's best plays. I read it and soon after I told myself I needed to read more of his works. Thus, I got another book: The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. 11 months after, I finally managed to read them all.

The task of reading Shakespeare's works was not as difficult or tedious as it seems to be. It took me long because I was most of the time busy and didn't have time to read, so I read them in-between classes and studying. To my surprise, I loved some of the plays, others disturbed me, and others made me laugh out loud.

The first plays I read were the most popular ones, and were the ones I enjoyes the most. The tragedies worked better for me than the comedies, with the exception of Romeo and Juliet, which I did not despise but didn't love either. My favourite ones are probably Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello and A Midsummer's Night Dream.

About the historical plays, I can say they were harder to read because the tone was more serious and they were not meant to entertain, but they were worth reading all the same. I think the best ones here were the ones about Richard II and III.

As for the poems, they were good too. They were beautiful, and this is said by someone who is not used to read poetry.

I tell you, this challenge is one of the best I've put to myself. For next year, I'm not sure if I'll put more aside the Goodreads one because of my studies, but I certainly will read more classics (for example something by Jane Austen).

Not bad.

My first reading of the plays, sonnets, and Venus and Adonis (maybe not Lucrece) was in the Kittredge edition; my professor, in the yearlong course in all the plays, was a student of Kittredge's.
When I came to teach the plays, I used Harrison until this one-volume edition appeared, and definitely improved students' access by modernizing some spelling and punctuation. Since there's evidence Shakespeare punctuated rarely, using the line ends as punctuation (the "D Hand" of the Book of Sir Thomas More) all punctuation proceeds from editors, be they Hemings and Condell, or possibly Florio, etc.
This edition includes clear renderings of the D Hand of Sir T.M, and photographs of Shakespeare's handwriting in that MS, in the most controversial passage. Shakespeare seems to have been given More's speech to the uprising, as the Bard was expert at not offending authorities ready to jail playwrights for public incitements. I used to tell my classes that one of Shakespeare's main accomplishments as a playwright was NOT to be jailed. Contrast Jonson (in his case, not for his writing, but killing a man in a duel), Marston and Chapman.
The D Hand also features many Shakespearean phrases, like :"ravenous fishes," and especially "this your mountainish inhumanity." Note that More addresses artisans uprising to defend poor London craftsmen against foreigners, "strangers" now working in England. (Shades of Brexit?)
In the sixties I first read about the D Hand in Samuel Tannenbaum's 1929 study, at the U Minnesota Library before it had moved across the Mississippi to the great brick pile it now occupies.
Perhaps it's a failure to fill my review of this major edition with such a detail, but it serves to illustrate how useful the volume is throughout, concise in scholarship (separate volume contains scholarly references) but pertinent and readable.

this is officially the biggest book I own, and it’s actually just a bunch of books/ plays/ poems in one

Young Frankie in Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes says that "Shakespeare is like mashed potatoes; you can never have too much." It's a compliment both to the poet and the potato, and I agree wholeheartedly. To read the ol' Swan of Avon straight through has, I believe, made me legitimately smarter, and not just in a know-more-stuff-in-my-chosen-profession sense, but in a understand-the-world-around-me sense. Eliot says that Shakespeare and Dante "divided the world between them, and there is no third." So yeah, he's good.
Anyway, here's a little something I wrote for the kids in my school's creative writing club:

The Ballad of Billy S.

this is the rule: if you can kill
a guy just by dropping
someone's "Collected Works" on him,
the author is a king

because if we collect your works,
it follows that you're good
and if you're writing all that much
we'll read you (or, we should)

and Ceasars come and Ceasars go
but "et tu, Brute?" endures
and what has stood time's test must be
'gainst ipads, too, secure.

"it cannot be coincidence"
(his chant was like a seer's)
"it flows in such easy iambs:
The Bard: William Shakespeare."

This year's goal is to attempt to read all of Shakespeare's work

COMEDIES
All's Well That Ends Well 27/1/22
As You Like It 22/2/22
The Comedy of Errors
Cymbeline 1/3/22
Love's Labours Lost
Measure for Measure
The Merry Wives of Windsor
The Merchant of Venice 20/05/22
A Midsummer Night's Dream 18/1/22
Much Ado About Nothing 19/01/22-21/01/22
Pericles, Prince of Tyre
Taming of the Shrew 20/06/22-21/06/22
The Tempest 24/04/22-25/04/22
Troilus and Cressida
Twelfth Night 5/1/22
Two Gentlemen of Verona
Winter's Tale

HISTORIES
Henry IV, part 1
Henry IV, part 2
Henry V
Henry VI, part 1
Henry VI, part 2
Henry VI, part 3
Henry VIII
King John
Richard II
Richard III

TRAGEDIES
Antony and Cleopatra 22/2/22
Coriolanus 23/2/22-28/2/22
Hamlet 4/3/22- 5/3/22
Julius Caesar
King Lear
Macbeth 08/07/22-10/07/22
Othello
Romeo and Juliet 20/05/22
Timon of Athens
Titus Andronicus

THE COMPLETE POEMS
154 Sonnets 09/06/22-11/06/22
A Lover's Complaint 26/1/22
The Rape of Lucrece
Venus and Adonis
A Funeral Elegy 28/1/22 (less)