Finally finished reading this. I don't mean that in a "thank goodness that's over" way, just that it wasn't something I could really tear through. Overall, I enjoyed it. Shakespeare is one of those, like all mortals, who has his good moments and his not-so-good moments. When he is good, he is brilliant. When he is bad, he is terrible. And there were a few I can say I did not enjoy, at all.

I'm probably inviting the Pitchfork and Torches crowd, but I have to say that I have never enjoyed Romeo and Juliet. It isn't the star-crossed lovers theme, or the feuding families, or anything really specific, simply that I have, since the first time I read it in high school, wanted to reach in to shake Juliet and smack Romeo upside the head.

I wasn't overly fond of Richard III, but much of that stems from the fact that Shakespeare and I are on opposite sides of the fence regarding the Plantagenets and the Tudors. Richard III is one of my favorites royals and he was writing plays during the reign of Elizabeth I, Henry VII's granddaughter. To some extent, politics must take precedence. Still, it's a well-written play, and I can enjoy it for that, even if I disagree with the premise.

My favorite has to be The Tempest, which I read in high school. I love the relationship between Prospero and Ariel. It just sets up a great tone and I never tire of reading it.

Poems and sonnets, there were ones I enjoyed and those I wasn't quite as fond of. Still, that's what is so great about a large body of work like this - there is something for everyone and we all can have our opinions about each and every play, poem, and sonnet.

Update as of 2022: Last summer I went to a live production in a castle garden of A Midsummer Night's Dream. I've always thought this play overdone a bit like Romeo and Juliet, it's one of the more popular ones, and I think I finally realize why. Shakespeare, without a doubt, is meant to be seen on stage. I can not stress enough how incredibly brilliant this author is with the written play and seeing it acted out on stage gives it a whole new dimension. This play was fantastic and had me laughing and falling in love with Shakespeare all over again. One of the best classical authors ever. And I highly encourage you to see at least one of his plays in your lifetime.

Shakespeare as classical writing written when I first started reading Shakespeare:

I understand now why I have such a hard time reading Shakespeare. It's not that it's hard to understand. There are enough translations and self help guides to get you through the plot of any of the plays. And once I started reading and translating, I started to get the hang of it, and had fewer words and phrases that I had to look up. No, it's not that. Simply put, it's a play, and not meant to be read. I know there are some who might disagree with me, however, that's my opinion. I revel in the complacency of description and plays don't have it. It is just dialogue. There is nothing to tell you infinitely how a character is feeling or what they're thinking. There's nothing to tell you how the set looks (besides a sometimes small minimalist description). There is nothing to tell how a character looks, are they beautiful? Are they old? Yes, I understand you can infer many of these things from the dialogue which is what you're supposed to do, but to me, there is great room for interpretation, unlike a book, which will describe it for you.

Also, after doing a little reading on Shakespeare and the republishing of his works, it seems there are many different conflicting sources of original text, which is why you often find various works with different scripts. I truly believe that Shakespeare meant these to be seen on stage, not read from a page. It's where his genius is best seen and appreciated. That being said, I plan to read each play, then watch a movie rendition of each one.

I would also like to list the reasons here that Shakespeare's works are classics instead of going into the same points repeatedly as I review each work. They are classics, I can't dispute it, whether or not I enjoy each individual play or not. And I do believe this is the first time that an author has gotten 8 out of 10 of my Definitions for a Classic.

1. Longevity: He's been around through the ages and I have no doubt we'll be acting out his plays on the moon.

2. The magic factor: His stories will pull you in every time. They focus on the aspects of human nature that we all can relate to, so you care about the outcome of the characters.

3. Unique: He has an unusual literary style that has made him popular throughout history.

4. New Style of Writing: Now I'm stretching it with this one, I know, because anyone who has studied literature knows Shakespeare wasn't the first to use Iambic Pentameter, however I believe he was the first to make it popular. You ask anyone to tell you the first author that comes to mind when you say Iambic Pentameter and they're not going to say Chaucer, they're going to say Shakespeare.

5. Huge Following: There isn't a person on the planet who doesn't know who Shakespeare is.

6. Controversial: To say his works are controversial is an understatement. The amount of times he's been banned is enough to put him in this category. The reasons for his censorship are diverse but range from vulgarity, to sex, to politics, to excessive use of freedom. (seriously, what does that even mean?)

7. Underlying themes: Underlying themes run rampant throughout his works and offer a wide variety of human conditions. Anything from betrayal and love to honour and glory can be seen in his works.

8. Substantial Influence: Shakespeare has had influence in every aspect of society from helping to shape the English language (It's all greek to me and tongue-tied - said to have added over 1700 words to the English language) to politics. (Dangers of introducing foreign politics into a city)

Works I've read:


Othello


Romeo and Juliet


Hamlet


Macbeth


Much Ado About Nothing


A Midsummer Night's Dream


King Lear


The Merchant of Venice


As You Like It


The Taming of the Shrew


The Comedy of Errors

https://goodticklebrain.com/home/2020...

At this point in time a review of William's collected works seems redundant. However, the experience of reading all his works as a single book is worth noting. I have read The Collected Works twice. Both times I did so in one go. Read slept read slept read etc. until finished. (I would read while eating and other activities, so really only stopped for sleeping.)

This practice with this particular work is extremely beneficial. William is not an easy read, at first. That difficulty in the beginning easily fools us into believing it will remain so, but it doesn't. For a few reasons. First, the way the plays are written and to whom they were written, comes into, er... play. (Forgive me.) William wrote to an audience comprised of every level of literacy and sophistication. In every play he caters to them all.

Typically, he will have a complex literary part, filled with references particular to the time, or complex convoluted language, his equivalence of "purple prose." These passages, now, without knowing the specifics referred to or the out of date vocabulary can be hard to decipher. But, fortunately William also had an uneducated "common" audience. He would inevitably follow those difficult sections with straightforward, simple and obvious written which clarifies everything and lets us know what we need to know o follow the story. All we have to do is wait. Suspend our understanding for a while and let the comprehension come to us, instead of the usual other way around. A most handy skill with William.

Another benefit from reading the works as a single book with minimal breaks is the Attunement of the brain. I was not writing either time I read the Complete Works, I wish I had been. A consequence of that intense immersion is that one's brain realigns and adjust and, well, actually regrows neurons to accommodate the immersion and emphasis, all resulting in an increased capacity to assimilate, understand and comprehend. This mechanism is a most incredible one, and applies to anything we do, if we give it a chance to do so. We have to "get into' whatever it is we immerse ourselves into. We have to allow a bit of time for that Immersion to take hold.

With William the effect is dramatic. The more one reads the more one "clicks' and gets the language. Not only the language, but his brilliance. his metaphors, his wisdom, his insights into psychology and motivation. His cleverness and artistry, all become magnified. The more we Attune, the more magic there is to behold. When it comes to Appreciation, Shakespeare is one author that dramatically amplifies our joy the more we tune into his language and style. he is layered beyond layering.

For me, that immersion, since I did nothing else and likely barely spoke to anyone else during the read, the immersion resulted in my speech and thinking being affected. I could talk, "in Shakespeare." A most marvellous phenomenon. If I had been writing I would have loved to write something in that style. I came easy after the total involvement and my brain had the opportunity to retrain itself.

All in all, reading William's complete works as a book is highly highly recommended, as doing so opens us up to being able to connect with the fullness of his unparalleled genius.

Just a disaster, and I'm appalled by the people who gave this a five-star review. There's a fantastic review by the ever-reliable Jeanne Addison Roberts in Shakespeare Quarterly 1979 which is worth quoting: "the motivating spirit behind this spectacular non-book is clearly commercial".

Despite being published in 1978, A.L. Rowse's edition of Shakespeare breezily reprints a 1904 text (itself a copy of 19th century texts) which is itself an unusual decision, in light of the many worthy Shakespeare editions released in those intervening years, from the Arden to the Riverside. The introductions to each play are, as Roberts notes, "drawn almost entirely from [Rowse's] own earlier work" and are of the tossed-off variety, aiming to pontificate on a half-dozen received facts about the play without, it seems, much engagement with contemporary criticism. The margin glosses are surprisingly few and, while yes, Rowse can often be delightfully eccentric, as others note, he is also sometimes just passing the time. When pages pass with only three or four glosses, one feels that this can hardly be the Shakespeare for every household in the land. Sometimes, Rowse even uses "correct" as if he is just telling the reader what word should be there, rather than asserting his opinion in the crowded field of editors from 1709 to the present day.

The only reason this edition merited two stars was because there are many hundreds of pictures, most of them nineteenth-century, meaning at least there is some historical value to this work. Given the grotesque size of the thing, this is hardly worth the purchasing, particularly not with another forty years having passed in the interim.

To quote Roberts once more, "do we laugh or cry?"

Update: Seven plays into my current spree, I'm going to have to put this on hold due to a lack of time. I've now read 17 total- my most severe weakness is the histories (have only read Richard III and Henry IV). When I come back to this project, I think that I will be reading those in order.

1st: Macbeth (finished-review posted)
2nd: Two Gentlemen of Verona (finished-review posted)
3rd: King Lear (finished-review posted)
4th: Merchant of Venice (finished-review posted)
5th: Othello (finished-review posted)
6th: Comedy of Errors (finished-review posted)
7th: Antony and Cleopatra (finished)

Original Post: I've been thinking about doing this for awhile, but as it is Shakespeare's birthday, I've decided that now is the time to start this project. I want to read everything, starting with the plays I haven't read in awhile, or at all, and moving to the ones I'm more familiar with. I'll post individual reviews as I go through.

I am going to try to read this entire book over the course of 2016, following Matthew J. Franck's 2016 Shakespeare In A Year reading plan. (Hat tip to Emily for letting me know this exists!) I've only ever read maybe eight or ten different Shakespeare plays, and other than a re-read of Hamlet in 2011 while preparing to read Infinite Jest I don't think I've ever picked one up outside of a classroom setting.

This review is a work in progress. I'll try to update it each time I finish a play.

The Two Gentlemen of Verona: This is believed to be the earliest, or one of the earliest, of Shakespeare's plays, and it shows. It is...not very good. It has a lot of elements that will appear again in other Shakespeare plays, and there are definitely some funny and clever moments, but the last act is awful. The conflict just falls away! All friendships and romantic relationships are restored! This one is really only interesting for the glimpses of what Shakespeare will become.

The Taming of the Shrew: Oof, another rough one. It's clearly more developed than The Two Gentlemen of Verona, but this play hinges entirely on a man gaslighting an overly opinionated woman until she turns into a submissive wife. There's also the somewhat bizarre fact that this is two plays rolled up into one, with the opening act taking place in a tavern, setting up the staging of a play-within-a-play, and then never returning to the characters in the tavern.

1, 2, 3 Henry VI: This was my first time reading any of Shakespeare's history plays, and this was also the first time I had regrets about buying the inexpensive but bare-bones Oxford Shakespeare, which does not contain any footnotes. I definitely know more about the Wars of the Roses now than I did before reading these three plays, but...not by much. A lot went over my head, and there were so many different characters that I had a hard time keeping track of everyone. I suspect the history plays are going to be an ongoing slog for me.

Titus Andronicus: While it was refreshing to get a break after three history plays in a row, Titus Andronicus is pretty much a nonstop bloodbath. I enjoyed parts of it, especially toward the end when Titus begins getting his revenge, but there's a rape scene, multiple mutilations, probably an even higher body count than 1, 2, and 3 Henry combined, and one single black character who is, cringeworthily, pretty much evil incarnate.

Richard III: This play continues the action of the three Henry VI plays. It is, I think, a better-written and more interesting play than its predecessors, but it's also the play that totally killed my momentum. I fell behind schedule for the first time since starting this project, and after finishing the play a few days late I decided to give myself "a short break" that lasted almost the entire rest of the month of March.

Edward III: I am skipping this one for now. Its authorship is contested - Shakespeare probably only wrote portions of it at most - and the thought of facing another history play kept extending my "short break." I'll try to come back to this one later, but given the questions about its authorship, I won't feel too guilty if I never do get around to it.

Comedy of Errors: This play is really funny and silly and was a welcome point of return after taking a few weeks off. It's about two pairs of estranged twins and ongoing cases of mistaken identities. It's a little frustrating in that all four of them know they have a twin, and the two from Syracuse should have been able to put things together that they were getting the royal treatment in Ephesus because people were mistaking them for their twins, but nobody makes these connections until the very end. Nevertheless, this was probably the first play of this Shakespeare project that I fully enjoyed.

Finally over.
Man, this was one hell of the ride.
When I first took this book, I thought I will read all the play written by Shakespear in 2 months, tops.
Little did I know it stretched over 8 months.
There were bad plays, good plays, and amazing plays, but overall Shakespeare is class of its own.

At some point, I simply had to invest in The Complete works. It didn't make sense to go on collecting mismatched editions of Shakespeare's plays!

A proper evaluation of this new edition of Shakespeare's (probably im)Complete Works from Oxford University Press would need at least 8000 words to explain, and I am not interested in writing that. Overall, the texts are well edited in the popular way of editor's changing the texts to what they believe Shakespeare actually wrote when they believe something was misprinted in the early editions. They also add lots of notes, and some that are perhaps less helpful than they are intended to be.

I am always grateful for glosses of obscure words and phrases, and these are mostly helpful. I am less grateful for the staging notes that coexist with the glosses. Those I have read are not inaccurate, but they discourage creative thinking by directing our attention to specific explanations which may or may not be correct.

I do not like the lack of introductions. In place of these are quotes about the plays from dozens of people. At best, these can hint at interpretations but really explain nothing. A well thought out interpretative introduction puts the play in context. We can agree or disagree with it, but it is an argument about the play, and a good introduction is of great value.

I deeply objected to the inclusion of the lyric "Shall I Die?" in the 1986 edition, but here I do not mind for it is in a section of poems attributed to Shakespeare in the seventeenth-century miscellanies. Fair enough. This will be a problem when I comment on the AUTHORSHIP COMPANION. The tiny section on the lost original version of SEJANUS, HIS FALL is another matter. There is no apparent warrant for it. It is just annoying to find it there.

I do not mind the controversial choice to note Shakespeare's co-authors on several plays and it is about time that ARDEN OF FAVERSHAM and other works made it into a supposedly complete Shakespeare. On the other hand, the 1994 Second Edition of the previous version had complete texts of EDWARD III and SIR THOMAS MORE. The current edition only excerpts the Shakespearean parts of those plays. The previous was a deeply flawed edition of Shakespeare, but these excisions might be even worse.

On the other hand, this is Shakespeare!

All's Well That Ends Well 5/24/2016 - 5/26/2016 ** An intelligent woman helps the king who then grants her anything in his power. She wants to marry some guy who was raised as her brother. He would rather go to war then marry her. She then follows him and tricks him into marrying her. All's well that ends well.

As You Like It 6/16/16 - 6/23/2016 *** Brothers that are dukes fight and one is banished. Brothers that are young and sons of a different duke fight and one leaves. They fall in love with girls. All ends happily. Although the end was a little sudden/easy, I found this one more enjoyable than the previous story.

The Comedy of Errors 8/3/2016 - 8/7/2016 ***
Two sets of twins are given the exact same name and then separated for years. Eventually one looks for the other and a comedy of errors occurs when everyone keeps confusing the twins. It was cute, but really, the same name?

Cymbeline, King of Britain 1/3/2017 - 1/17/2017 ***
I can't read One Hundred Years of Solitude while on the treadmill, so this will be my running book for a bit. Finished this and only about half through Solitude, so I may get another Shakespeare in. This book wasn't quite comedy although there was some silly stuff, particularly mixed identities and sneaking around in a traveling trunk. Can't be described as a tragedy as it all worked out in the end. It was enjoyable, but based on having not heard of it, probably one of the more forgettable.

Love's Labour's Lost 1/23/2017 - 1/28/2017 **
A few dudes get together and swear to study and give up women for 3 years. They forgot they were meeting some women in a few days and allow it to happen. They all fall in love instantly. There are funny parts, but also slow parts, and then the story just ends. Some of the better prose, but the story fell flat for me.

Measure by Measure 6/12/2018 - 6/13/2018 ***
Duke disguises himself to see how his replacement will act. He doesn't act very nicely. Some more tricks in the dark to make people have sex. Everything ends happy. This was a quick read, we knew the Duke was going to make everything ok in the end, but the different characters wouldn't know it, although he must have had one hell of a disguise.

The Merchant of Venice 1/31/2019 - 2/5/19 ****
I enjoyed this one, maybe it is because I haven't read any of these in a long while, or maybe it was recognizing the name and never having read it. Not too much happens. You have the mean, nasty Jew, and in the end he is outsmarted and everyone lives happily ever after. Evidently being Jewish is so terrible, your children run away. Only part I didn't like was the end when Portia announced out of the blue, that she had a letter telling Antonio that he was all good.

The Merry Wives of Windsor 2/7/19 - 2/14/19 **
This one would have made a better play than a "read." Some wives play a trick on their husbands, and almost go to far. One of their daughters marries the person she wants instead of the other people her parents want her to marry. Again, not a great read, but probably makes for a funny play.

A Midsummer Night's Dream 5/22/19 - 5/25/19 ***
This is another one where i feel i really should see the play. Not overly interesting to read but im sure the comedy would come out watching it performed.

Much Ado about Nothing 1/18/2022 (wow, I have neglected this one) - 1/20/2022 ***
A typical play from what I've been reading. Two people don't want to marry and end up marrying. Two want to marry and some silly disguises ruin the wedding, but ultimately everything works out in the end.

Pericles, Prince of Tyre 1/21/2022 - 1/25/2022 ****
I admit I had never heard of this story, but it was nice to read one with no foreknowledge. I enjoyed this story very much.

The Taming of the Shrew 6/16/2022 - 6/22/2022 **
This might be the first one to really show its age, as it is very old fashioned in its treatment of women. The play also has an "intro" that is never revisited, which seemed strange to me.

The Tempest 8/16/22 - 8/18/22 ***
Magic guy is banished, sort of gets revenge, but then forgives. Some fun quotes, including "brave new world"

Troilus and Cressida 12/20/22 - 12/27/22 **** I felt this one did not have a true ending, but this was one of the few ones I wouldn't mind seeing a play of as I felt it had an interesting story.

The Twelfth Night 12/28/22 - 1/2/23 *** Twins, mistaken identities and a love triangle. This did not approach the comedy in "a comedy of errors" but was interesting enough.

The Two Gentlemen of Verona 5/18/23-5/19/23 ** Another that may be more interesting to watch as a play than to read. I will admit there was a section where I was laughing out loud as the page described his love of the milkmaid.

The Winter's Tale 8/16/23-8/23/23 ** Jealous king causes wife/son to die from shame. Lost daughter returns and the wife comes back to life. Everyone is happy, except the dead son.

Henry IV Part 1 and 2 05/16/24 - IDK *** Evidently these are really the 2nd and 3rd book of a semi-trilogy, but nothing was hard to follow. King who rose to power has to fight to keep it. His son likes to hang with seedy characters. He joins up with his dad without much of a fuss. Falstaff is silly. In part two they win the war by a bit of deception, but oh well.

The Life of Henry the Fifth 10/31/24 - 11/19/24 *** Once more into the breach. Just tearing through these Henrys. I didn't like that a few scenes had a lot of French in them, as I don't speak French. Otherwise was fine.

The First Part of Henry VI

Far more fascinating and accessible than I might have expected. Occasionally horrendous. Often brilliant. Lots of amazingly sharp female characters who then give in right after tearing someone a new one. More variation to the tragedies than the comedies. Nearly constant opportunities to talk about various social issues and human foibles with the theater tween.