“Are you reading the whole of Shakespeare?”
“Re-reading.”
“Why?”
“I like Shakespeare.”
“I like… my cat.”
Fortunes of War, BBC, 1987
Way back in aught six, I made an unknowingly prescient and loosely pragmatic resolution: to finish reading the whole of Shakespeare, including “the ones no one alludes to” so I could “kick ass at Jeopardy!” Because you know, that’s the ultimate geek flex.
Six years later, I resolved to finally finish all the histories, because… I don’t recall why. Probably I just saw the incomplete checkmarks on the table of contents of my doorstop copy of The Complete Works and decided then and there that it was a challenge that needed doing once and for all. Six months after that, I irretrievably fell in love with the inimitable Sir Kenneth Branagh. His fortuitous recitation of Caliban’s speech from The Tempest during the 2012 London Olympics further goosed me to memorize speeches from every play—an achievement I am proud to have actually accomplished, even though I don’t remember all of them anymore.
Then 2020 came and I made the even more prescient New Year’s resolution to RE-read the whole of Shakespeare well before the pandemic started, giving me more than enough to do during those interminable socially distanced hours and days and weeks and months. It was one play a week, plus all the poems and sonnets for 48 weeks. Almost as soon as I read the last line, thus completing my goal, I wanted to jump back in. Instead, I convinced myself to “take a break” instead just re-memorize my favorite speeches again and add a few extra that I’ve always had my heart on. Which I totally did.
(32. I’m up to 32.)
For years now, I’ve been excited about turning 40, if only because, in my mind, it marks an age when you don’t have to give a shit about certain things anymore. Conversely, I shall give more shits about the things I truly adore and dedicate more time to the associated hobbies of my interests. Namely, movies and Shakespeare. And plants and cooking and drawing and furniture. And fake boyfriends. But mostly movies and Shakespeare. And Shakespeare IN movies. And fake boyfriends in Shakespeare movies.
(O ‘tis most sweet/When in one line two crafts directly meet)
LO! I publicly declare that starting as soon as I work out my plan of scholarly attack I shall do a deep dive of every work, approximately one play per month, for as long as it takes, which will be over three years at minimum. It’s gonna be LIT. Like, literally LITerature. Lit literature. Literally.
This will also give me the perfect excuse to collect a whole pile of books. I covet every copy of the individual Arden and Folger editions for each play. The Ardens because they slap, the Folgers because I’m proud that America has the largest Shakespeare library in the dang world (82 out of 235 known extant First Folios, yo), and they produce a superlative podcast that’s just *chef’s kiss* my favorite.
SO! I will begin with Richard II, a pet favorite of mine, because the eponymous drama King makes revelry of his self-imposed downfall in a highly quotable manner, and provides lessons for us all regarding self-entitled knobs, which is apropos of everything these days.
Going forward, I will try to group plays in clusters that make sense to me intermixing history/comedy/tragedy/romance so I have variety. Sonnets/poems will be sprinkled in every week as well, according to the newly proposed ordering system of Edmondson and Wells, who recently published a glorious little book of ALL the known sonnets of Shakespeare, whose audiobook is chiefly narrated by Sir Ken himself.
(I have to be very careful while driving and listening to that because it frequently gets very steamy.)
I have a skeleton of a syllabus in place, and a few books on order. Old William, my forever boyfriend, awaits.
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