It's Shakespeare, great stories, difficult language? What more can one say about most people's favourite genius? He proves human nature hasn't changed over centuries and it's what we relate to that makes the best stories. This book stood me in good stead through Uni studies -6 or so in 101 and 12 to 14 of his Tragedies in second year. I only had to buy Hamlet as 1 professor keen on having the right page quoted etc.
I have not read it all - but Hamlet for HSC, Open Foundation, 1st year and 2nd year at Uni (so think I finally got it!); loved Patrick Stewart as Claudius in BBC version. What can I add to probably thousands of reviewers? I do enjoy Shakespeare when have to study him and have it explained by teachers and the critics etc. Still haven't settled in to read the ones I haven't yet. Sonnets were brilliant!
Midsummer Night's Dream easiest to simply enjoy.
Romeo & Juliet, star in so many films of American high school it must be embedded permanently in their curriculum. Othello, yes that took me by surprise. King Lear, I loved the irony. MacBeth, yes, in fact I think having seen it played live does add so much, even beyond movies with the "greats" of the acting world. The Merchant of Venice, takes me right back to high school in the sixties, maybe my first encounter with Shakespeare? To pick one as my favourite, Twelth Night I think. They all had their special moments and lessons.

I challenged myself at the beginning of this year to read The Complete Works of William Shakespeare

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I have reviewed each play individually and have shelved them here on GR so won’t comment here about any specific play.

I wasn’t sure when I started this that I would be able to persevere and finish. This was indeed a challenge - it took quite a bit of time and dedication to get through all this material in one year. I’m thankful I made the effort.

As a lifelong reader, to me, this is kind of the Mount Everest of reading. It can be difficult to follow the dialogue and plot in many parts. Fortunately, there are numerous resources out there about William Shakespeare’s works. From Cliffsnotes, Sparknotes, Folgers Shakespeare, and Wikipedia to The Shakespeare Network on YouTube, I admittedly leaned very heavily on about every summary and synopsis that I could. I have to give a special shout out to The Shakespeare Network on YouTube. Excellent audio productions of everything Shakespeare - it was invaluable.

Collectively, Shakespeare’s works are epic. Comedies, dramas, historical plays, beautifully crafted poems and sonnets. It’s been a very worthwhile reading challenge.

I read The Complete Works of William Shakespeare in this order(credit Benjamin McEvoy for the list - which does well in starting big and allows the reader to get used to Shakespeare which helps on some of the more obscure plays).

☑️ 1. Hamlet - 1/1/23 — 5 Stars
☑️ 2. King Lear - 1/7/23 — 3 Stars
☑️ 3. Much Ado About Nothing 1/14/23 - 5 stars
☑️ 4. Romeo and Juliet - 1/20/23 - 5 stars
☑️ 5. Othello - 1/30/23 - 5 stars
☑️ 6. The Tempest - 2/22/23 - 3 stars
☑️ 7. Macbeth - 2/25/23 - 4 stars
☑️ 8. Richard II - 2/26/23 - 5 stars
☑️ 9. A Midsummer Night's Dream -3/1/23 - 3 stars
☑️ 9.5 - Poem Break - Venus and Adonis - 3/12/13 - 4 stars
☑️ 10. Julius Caesar - 3/16/23 - 5 stars
☑️ 11. King Henry IV, Part 1 - 4/6/23 - 3.5 stars
☑️ 12. King Henry IV, Part 2 - 4/27/23 - 3.5 stars
☑️ 13. As You Like It - 5/6/23 - 4 stars
☑️ 14. The Merchant of Venice - 5/10/23 - 4.5 stars
☑️ 15. King Henry V - 5/12/23 - 3.5 stars
☑️ 16. Twelth Night - 5/20/23 - 2 stars
☑️ 17. King Henry VI, Part 1 - 5/21/23 - 5 stars
☑️ 18. All's Well That Ends Well - 5/28/23 - 2.5 stars
☑️ 18.5 Poem Break - The Rape of Lucrece - 5/28/23 - 5 stars
☑️ 19. King Henry VI, Part 2 - 6/7/23 - 4 stars
☑️ 20. The Winter's Tale - 6/12/23 - 4 stars
☑️ 21. Love's Labour's Lost - 7/3/23 - 3 stars
☑️ 22. King Henry VI, Part 3 - 8/25/23 - 5 stars
☑️ 23. Measure for Measure - 8/27/23 - 4 stars
☑️ 24. King Richard the Third - 9/1/23 - 5 stars
☑️ 25. The Taming of the Shrew - 9/10/23 - 5 stars
☑️ 26. Coriolanus - 9/13/23 - 3 stars
☑️ 27. Titus Andronicus - 9/20/23 - 4 stars
☑️ 28. Timon of Athens - 9/23/23 - 3 stars
☑️ 29. King John - 9/30/23 - 2.5 stars
☑️ 29.5 Poem Break - A Lover's Complaint - 10/1/23 - 5 stars
☑️ 30. Troilus and Cressida - 10/3/23 - 1 star
☑️ 31. The Comedy of Errors - 10/5/23 - 5 stars
☑️ 32. Cymbeline - 10/8/23 - 4 stars
☑️ 33. The Merry Wives of Windsor - 10/21/23 - 3.5 stars
☑️ 34. King Henry VIII - 10/22/23 - 3 stars
☑️ 35. The Two Gentlemen of Verona - 10/25/23 - 2 stars
☑️ 36. Pericles - 10/26/23 - 4 stars
☑️ 37. Antony and Cleopatra - 10/27/23 - 4 stars
☑️ 37.5 - Poem Break - The Passionate Pilgrim and The Phoenix and the Turtle - 10/1/23 - 5 stars
☑️ 38. Shakespeare's Sonnets - 9/6/23 - 2.5 stars

Perhaps I’ll try this challenge again someday. I’ll at least revisit many of these plays. This was great.

As if I couldn't get any more pretentious, I've decided to mark my place using a goose feather. This becomes a narrative throughout my notes lol
I got this edition sometime around when it was first published in 2006. Borders bookstores were still a thing. I was in the 6th or 7th grade. My full name is haphazardly scrawled across the bottom: I ran out of space and my surname is squished. Much like with my edition of Moby Dick, at the time of purchase, I couldn't read this. I'm now 28 (26 when I started). I can read it without any trouble.
When I'd tell people that this is what I'd do in my free time, they'd seem bewildered. They ask for clarification. "All of it?" or "Which translation?" It wouldn't be unusual to get an "I can't understand any of that." I have my preferences but I'm not a snob. I'd tell them how I didn't get it either when I first tried and that I've spent lots of time in the dictionary because of it. And hey, if you WANT to read Shakespeare, get an edition that is easy for you to understand.
My main goals here were:
t1. Read all of Shakespeare with this translation
t2. Extract words I like
t3. Learn about structuring figurative language
I still have to work on #2. I was doing this by hand, but it was slowing down my reading progress. I'll write a python script when I get around to it.
My main complaint is how these stories have brought along with them beliefs that negatively affect our societies. There's no shortage of racism, sexism, anti-semitism, and pro-capitalist language that remains with us today. The "good guys" still remain immoral or constrained products of their author's time.
A question I obviously get a lot is whether I like Shakespeare. I usually groan and shrug. The stories can be engaging but they're not "good". Characters are nonsensical stereotypes (ugly people are villains) and the plots/conclusions are unrealistic for their respective genres (villains confess and/or die). These traits are exactly what made them work. The dialogue is witty and the rest is mostly the popular opinions of the time period, even when Shakespeare was being risqué.
My notes are over every story and poem and are too long to post here. Below is a OneDrive link you may visit to read the PDF. Be wary of my crude language and I apologize for any spelling/grammatical mistakes.
Enjoy your meal.

January:
1. Two Gentlemen of Verona (1589–1591) - January 1, 2017
2 The Taming of the Shrew (1590–1591) - January 5, 2017
3 Henry VI, Part 2 (1591) - February 1, 2017

February:
4 Henry VI, Part 3 (1591) - February 3, 2017
5 Henry VI, Part 1 (1591–1592) - January 21, 2017
6 Titus Andronicus (1591–1592) - February 9, 2017

March:
7 Richard III (1592–1593) - March 4, 2017
8. The Comedy of Errors (1594) - March 11, 2017
9. Love's Labour's Lost (1594–1595) - March 27, 2017

April:
10. Richard II (1595) - April 7, 2017
11. Romeo and Juliet (1595) - April 12, 2017
12. A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595) - April 21, 2017

May:
13. King John (1596) - May 3, 2017
14. The Merchant of Venice (1596–1597) - May 8, 2017
15. Henry IV, Part 1 (1596-1597) - May 20, 2017

June:
16. The Merry Wives of Windsor (1597) - June 20, 2017
17. Henry IV, Part 2 (1597-1598) - June 24, 2017
18. Much Ado About Nothing (1598-1599) - June 25, 2017

July:
19. Henry V (1599) - July 5, 2017
20. Julius Caesar (1599) - July 10, 2017
21. As You Like It (1599-1600) - July 26, 2017

August:
22. Hamlet (1600-1601)- August 12, 2017
23. Twelfth Night (1601) - August 15, 2017
24. Troilus and Cressida ((1600–1602) - August 29, 2017

September:
25. Measure for Measure (1603-1604) - September 6, 2017
26. Othello (1603-1604) - September 15, 2017
27. All's Well that Ends Well (1604-1605) - September 12, 2017

October:
28. King Lear (1605–1606) - October 19, 2017
29. Timon of Athens (1605–1606) - October 20, 2017
30. Macbeth (1606) - October 28, 2017

November:
31. Antony and Cleopatra (1606) - November 17, 2017
32. Coriolanus (1608) - November 23, 2017
33. The Winter's Tale (1609–1611) - November 25, 2017

December:
34. Cymbeline (1610) - December 11, 2017
35. The Tempest (1610–1611) - December 12, 2017
36. Henry VIII (1612–1613) - December 16, 2017

Other:
Pericles, Prince of Tyre (1607–1608) - November 21, 2017
The Sonnets (1609) - December 19, 2017
The Two Noble Kinsmen (1613–1614) - December 19, 2017
The Narrative Poems (1593-1594) - December 23, 2017

When we reread Hamlet in 2025, J enthused about every reference to Denmark.

tAs famous as the great poet is, I believe that his works are rarely read and recognized too little. The Complete Works of Shakespeare is as the title says, all the works of Shakespeare. This, in my sense, let me understand better about his writing. Two important things that William Shakespeare efficiently accomplished were the superb plots and fitting the outline of the iambic pentameter. One thing that most successful writers have are good plotlines. This talent isn’t something anyone can acquire. Also, I have learned that the iambic pentameter type poem is very hard to make, having a specific pattern to a specific number of syllables. For an ordinary person, it might have taken their lifetime to write about five stories, in which Shakespeare wrote around 37 plays. This needs a remarkable amount of effort and energy, and that is why I believe that more people should acknowledge his works more.

19/10 - I've just started a course on Shakespeare through FutureLearn and the first play that we are studying is The Merry Wives of Windsor, which is one I know absolutely nothing about. So far, I've read about three pages, or to the end of scene one and what I understand is that while I can barely understand the language, I can get the general gist of what's going on (or at least I think I can). There are many instances where God is Got, better is petter, brings is prings, very is fery, good is goot, and w is left off the beginning of a couple of words, all of which makes for confusing and slow reading. I think I understand what was being discussed in scene one - Shallow has accused Falstaff of assault, breaking and entering and poaching of his deer - but it was a little difficult to pull that information out of all those difficult and misspelt words. Professor Bate's (who is the scholar running the course) comment that Elizabethan's weren't concerned with spelling is certainly proven correct by the writing in The Merry Wives of Windsor. To be continued...

At the end of act I, scene III - I don't understand why Falstaff is trying to woo a pair of married women. Is he just being spiteful? Or is he delusional enough to really believe that they 'gave him good eyes'? To be continued...

26/10 - Well I finished it, mostly thanks to www.sparknotes.com. I really had trouble with the language throughout the play and had to refer to SparkNotes at least once a page. I could see where the dialogue might be funny, but I think it might work better as an acted out play rather than a read one. I feel like I would have enjoyed The Merry Wives of Windsor a lot more if I had been able to imagine what was happening in the scene better.

Our next play to study is A Midsummer Night's Dream. This is one of the plays I studied at school, I think I was in year 10 literature, so about 16. I remember enjoying it and the movie with Calista Flockhart and Kevin Kline, also the Balanchine ballet. I think I might have to make a concerted effort to get my hands on one or both of these, watching the action really does help my comprehension of the dialogue. To be continued...

31/10 - A Midsummer Night's Dream was an easier and much more humourous read. Having read it before and seen the 1999 movie surely made a difference and "Yay!" I've managed to download/rent that same movie through my pay tv service. A movie of this week's play, Henry V, is proving more difficult to acquire. No luck with my pay tv service, iTunes, Hoyts Kiosk, or my library system.

I've heard the quote

"Once more unto the breach, my dear friends..."

many times but had no idea it was Shakespeare's words that I was hearing, or a paraphrased version of it, from sources as diverse as Star Trek to every day use around the office. To be continued...

PopSugar 2015 Reading Challenge: A Play

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?"

'The most tremendous case of poetic genius the world has ever seen...' - Thomas Mann.

That's all you need to know.

Always a pleasure

"Give me my robe. Put on my crown; I have immortal longings in me".

Finished!!

This took me 4 years. I feel like I should get a plaque or be allowed to put this on my resume or something.

--Favorite plays:
Henry V, Macbeth, Hamlet, The Taming of the Shrew, Much Ado About Nothing, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

--Favorite lines:
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. —Hamlet

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day, to the last syllable of recorded time. —Macbeth

Let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the deaths of kings. —Richard II

Sit by my side and let the world slip: we shall ne’er be younger. —The Taming of the Shrew

Everyone can master a grief but he that has it. —Much Ado About Nothing

--Favorite sonnet:
#116