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The Shakespeare Project: Chronological Reading List (Patreon)

Published:
2023-01-08 21:07:09
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2026-06
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Content

Today we are discussing the exciting project of reading all of Shakespeare in chronological order.

The video above begins with sharing my personal experience with Shakespeare, and the rationale behind such an ambitious reading project. We'll discuss the difficulty of establishing chronology, our approach, and how to read and rank the works.

Please do feel free to utilise the timestamps below to jump straight to the list or to topics that interest you.

The list we are working from is also printed below, and we have a PDF at the bottom of this post.

Video Timestamps:

  • 0:00 why Shakespeare?

  • 2:00 my personal experience

  • 12:00 seeing ourselves in the works

  • 15:28 the healing power of Shakespeare

  • 22:15 why read chronologically?

  • 23:00 on difficult reading projects

  • 25:30 anticipating difficulties

  • 30:30 how to establish chronology

  • 34:00 on metrical evolution

  • 36:00 philosophical evolution

  • 37:00 revision & the theatrical world

  • 40:51 how to approach your reading

  • 41:30 searching for diamonds

  • 42:30 how to read the plays

  • 45:00 on critical appreciation

  • 47:08 how to rank your plays

  • 56:00 on the 'saga' experience

  • 57:52 resources for your reading

  • 59:17 the chronological order

The Chronological Order

We are splitting our order into four main phases of Shakespeare’s artistic development.

  • The first period sees the artist find his voice, and takes us up to c.1594.

  • The second period gives us the writer’s glorious rise and takes us up to 1599.

  • The third period gifts us Shakespeare’s sublime years with his iconic tragic procession, taking us up to 1608.

  • Then we end on the great writer’s twilight years, which takes us to 1613.

The First Period

The Second Period

The Third Period

The Fourth Period

  • 37. The Sonnets (& A Lover’s Complaint)

  • 38. Cymbeline

  • 39. The Winter’s Tale

  • 40. The Tempest

  • 41. Henry VIII

  • 42. The Two Noble Kinsmen

Some Questions for You:

1) What is your current relationship with Shakespeare?

2) Have you read a writer's entire works before? If so, how did you find the experience?

3) For readers working on a special author, who are you planning to read? Your answers will help our tailored discussion on this topic.

4) What are some examples of A+ works of literature in your personal canon?

Happy reading, everybody!

Files

Previews only

The Shakespeare Project: Chronological Reading List

0:00 why Shakespeare? 2:00 my personal experience 12:00 seeing ourselves in the works 15:28 the healing power of Shakespeare 22:15 why read chronologically? 23:00 on difficult reading projects 25:30 anticipating difficulties 30:30 how to establish chronology 34:00 on metrical evolution 36:00 philosophical evolution 37:00 revision & the theatrical world 40:51 how to approach your reading 41:30 searching for diamonds 42:30 how to read the plays 45:00 on critical appreciation 47:08 how to rank your plays 56:00 on the 'saga' experience 57:52 resources for your reading 59:17 the chronological order

Comments

Theresa Garton

I am excited about this. I have an old copy of the Complete Works of Shakespeare by Oxford Press, that I bought new in High School. MANY years ago now. I have read some things, but really only one or two plays, and scattered sonnets. I look forward to having a quick scan of EVERYTHING, and then diving more deeply into some of them later. I have read all of Jane Austin's novels, and found that a very interesting pursuit. I feel I got a real feeling for her voice. Hopefully this exercise with Shakespeare will do the same for me! I also have planned to read all of Dickens, chronologically. I have started on this project as well, with Pickwick Papars, and then Oliver Twist. I re-read A Christmas Carol in December. Are there plans to discuss the other Christmas stories at some point? Not sure I could give a single "A+" work, as I I generally would have ranked in the past based on my emotional reaction, and of course that can and has changed as I have matured - or aged. ;) But I have always loved Austin, and feel my reading of her complete novels only deepened that love of her spare yet so evocative writing, her sense of humor, and her rich, complex characters.

Linda Williamson

1) What is your current relationship with Shakespeare? I have not read Shakespeare for many years. I do however linger longingly over the tiny gilt-edged, leather bound novels I come across in antique stores and really good second-hand booksellers. I want to love them and indulge in them and was originally drawn to them because of my love for the King James Version of the bible. Shakespeare's language has always felt eloquent, and if I may say (?), very tongue in cheek. I have seen quite a few renditions of Romeo and Juliet (not my favorite), A Midsummer Night's Dream (enjoy tremendously), The Taming of the Shrew, As You Like It, and...The Reduced Shakespeare Company's "Abridged Version" of the all his works (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vd4h16DWpdU). This is a grainy old version, but still hilarious. I have seen film adaptations of many of Shakespeare's works and have found him to be endlessly quoted. I loved the comment from the lecture about the two who went to the play and the one stated, "I found it to be full of cliches." Ha! Love it :). 2) Have you read a writer's entire works before? If so, how did you find the experience? I have read every single book that Agatha Christie wrote, including those she wrote under another name. In fact, I have probably read through the mysteries five or six times each. I love the simplicity, the Belgian, and "Aunt" Jane. I have also read through L.M. Montgomery's writings several times and most of Austen's works. I love to read everything written by authors I enjoy, regardless of the category. In fact, I am enjoying Orlando Figes History of Russia so much that I will likely read his other books as well. 3) For readers working on a special author, who are you planning to read? Your answers will help our tailored discussion on this topic. I don't have a special author I am focusing on this year. I want to enjoy the book club reads and projects and continue my project of reading everything I own --- I have been working on this for two years now and feel as if I have made only a very small dent. Many of the books I own, I have read previously, but some are older/newer versions and I look forward to rereading them. Others I picked up with every intention of reading and life, or visual media distracted me. I was very excited to find two Brian Jacques Redwall books that I needed for the series, and the second book in Laurie King's Sherlock Holmes and Mary Russell series this weekend. I have also recently come across the life and works of Charles Spurgeon (first publication). Very Exciting for me. 4) What are some examples of A+ works of literature in your personal canon? King James, The Message, and New Living Translation of the Bible Anything by C.S, Lewis - fiction, essays, biography: anything Count De Monte Cristo Hugo King James, The Message, and New Living Translation of the Bible Sherlock Holmes Oswald Chambers Dietrich Bonhoeffer I am looking forward to growing this list! :)

Briana Delano

1. Shakespeare and I have dated, we've gone out on the standard "young lovers" first date in high school with a reading of Romeo and Juliet. My stepfather was adamant about taking me to plays and experiencing theater, so I saw many "Shakespeare in the Park" performances, etc. Othello, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Taming of the Shrew, and Hamlet. I don't recall the plays from my youth in detail. As a child I was impressed with his style and beauty when I understood it, but it was mostly beyond me. 2. I've never read a writer's entire works before. 3. This is a goal for DIckens, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Daphne du Marier. Dickens for his characters, human observations, humor, and general sense of happiness that his writing brews inside my soul. Doyle because how can one miss anything with Sherlock Holmes (he's horrible and wonderfully brilliant), du Marier for her use of emotional tension and tight narratives. Her style is great blend of a classically structured novel and modern thriller that features unique female characters. Finally, as a lofty goal I always hoped I could attain, Shakespeare as well. I've never been sure I'd make it through on my own. This club can hopefully help! 4. My most loved works are "If on a Winter's Night a Traveler" by Italo Calvino, "Great Expectations", "Crime and Punishment", "The Lord of the Rings" the creation of languages and worlds was amazing (knowing Norse mythology and Tolkien's bio makes it much deeper), "Grapes of Wrath", "The Portrait of Dorian Gray". I absolutely know I'm forgetting many.

Alex Franke

Hello! I just joined the Hardcore Literature Book Club and am VERY excited for not only the "Big Reads", but also to work in Shakespeare and other dramas. I have an undergraduate degree in theatre, and I have been aching to reread some Shakespeare, doing it with this group will be a great experience. I have ordered W&P and Prometheus Bound which will be here in a few days, so I am going to jump right into Comedy of Errors!

hardcoreliterature
>>100773044

Welcome to the club, Alex :) I'm so honoured to hear we have a theatre expert enjoying these great reads with us. I always wish I had pursued theatre studies myself. I can't wait to hear your thoughts on Shakespeare's early plays and Aeschylus!

Michael Bell

My introduction to Shakespeare came from my mother; not nearly as extensive an introduction as your own, but we all start somewhere. She owned parakeets for a time, and to each of these she gave the name of character from his plays (Romeo, Mercutio, and the like). This piqued my interest early-I was like nine at the time-and then much later, about grade 8, my English teacher, while we were covering Rome and Juliet, had us watch Franco Zefffirelli's film version, in order to help us make some sense of it. I fell in love with all of it, the language, the romance, the characters, (ahem) Olivia Hussey. It was magical. So I then began seeking out chances to see other plays. Given where we lived in the Southern United States, this mostly came in the form of film adaptations; some delightful- Branagh's "Much Ado" (Keanu Reeves notwithstanding) to the more dodgy (Mel Gibson as Hamlet?) and I savored each opportunity to engage with Shakespeare. In my early college days, I came across Bloom's "Invention of the Human", and it was a revelation. It was an entirely different way to read these texts, and I set out to at least read the major plays. This I have done, repeatedly reading works like Hamlet, and Lear...as well as finding whatever performances I could on DVD or online. However, this has primarily consisted of just the major plays, and has left the vast majority of his plays still to be discovered; and so I greatly look forward to this endeavor.

Elizabeth Madden
>>100773044

Alex, I just wanted to check in and see how you were enjoying the Project so far? I also have a background teaching Theatre Studies and am finding the work aariound the plays fascinating, as well as loving discovering plays previously unfamiliar to me.

David Prendergast

1. I revere Shakespeare. In high school, I had a girlfriend who played Lady Macbeth. I don't remember much about the play, except that the male lead wasn't very good and that my girlfriend looked really good in her costume. In college, I had a professor who cried while reading Shakespeare to the class. That impressed the hell out of me. But it wasn't until I took a university course in Shakespeare a couple of years ago (in my 60s) that I "discovered" Shakespeare. And it was because I started watching productions of the plays instead of reading them. Holy crap - it was a mind-altering and sublime experience. 2. I have read an author's entire body of work several times. Kurt Vonnegut, for example. Dostoyevsky, Salinger. At least a few others. It's like falling in love: you want to spend as much time as possible with this amazing person. 3. I am not currently working on a special author, but am considering doing that with Cormac McCarthy. I have read four of his books and am thinking I might just do the whole shebang. 4. This is a great question (A+ works of literature). That is, and should be, an extremely high bar. Here are some of my personal "very best" books: - Pale Fire (Nabokov) - Hamlet (Shakespeare) - Walden (Thoreau) - The Aeneid (Virgil / Dryden) - Housekeeping (Marilynne Robinson) - Boswell's Life of Johnson

Kelsy

1. I read Romeo & Juliet, Midsummer Night's Dream, and Hamlet in high school. I've also been to a "Shakespeare in the Park" performance once a long time ago, but honestly don't remember which play it was. It wasn't one of the that I'd read previously at the very least. 2. The only author whose entire works I've read so far is Amy Tan. It was really interesting to see the parallels between her novels and how certain themes come up in all of them but are presented in different ways. 3. I don't have a special author planned at the moment other than following along with this chronological Shakespeare project! I'd love to find another author to do a project like this for, though. 4. I have only recently been getting back into reading, so a lot of my "A+" works are ones I've read 10+ years ago but haven't revisited - East of Eden, Wuthering Heights, The Hundred Secret Senses by Amy Tan, The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I would really like to reread these all to reevaluate them, so I'm especially excited to reread East of Eden with this group. (I only just signed up yesterday, so I'm starting a bit late.) I'm hoping to find more A+ works in the future!

Jane

Just a few of my A+ list The Remains of the Day Kazuo Ishiguro,The Great Gatsby Scott Fitzgerald ,Never let me Go Kazuo Ishiguro Far from the Madding Crowd Thomas Hardy To Kill a Mocking Bird Harper Lee Brighton Rock Graham Greene. This year my special author is William Faulkner and I have discovered his tremendous short stories. This is not my first author special read which was Thomas Hardy . It is so satisfying to read ( almost) all the work of your favorite authors.

Pati

I like Shakespeare very much, that is until I had to study his work at high school. I used to read it in Spanish as I'm from Uruguay, but this year I already read 2 of his works in English. I read so far this year King Lear and Midsummer's night dream and was about to read Macbeth but if everybody here will read Othello (that's what I understood, I'm new here) then I'll re-read it first. I remember loving this work when I read it years ago. I didn't read the complete works of any classic author, I read a lot of Dickens but not all of his work as I didn't have the chance of getting them, but I already bought a lot of his work on Amazon and that's something I'm trying to do as I love his books.

Jamie Otelsberg

Hi everyone, Are there others here who are behind on the schedule? I am currently on Henry the VI part 1 (I just started in February). This is the first time I'm reading Shakespeare since High School and I'm finding it challenging but also really enjoying it. At this point i'm carving out Friday afternoons as my "Shakespeare Time." However, I'm still not able to find the time to finish a play in one, or even two sittings. So it's taking me a long time to get through one. Also because it's difficult reading! And I am trying to read and watch all of the accompanying material. Does anyone have any wise words to share about their Shakespeare journey so far and how you go about making the best of the experience? I'm enjoying it, and I definitely don't want to rush it, but feel a little left out now that the group is already up to King Lear!

Jaye Cee
>>134362999

Hi, I’ve just finished Julius Caesar, so yes, I’m several behind. I like your idea of having Friday afternoons as Shakespeare time. It sounds very cosy. I have stopped trying to go too deep at this point, or I will never finish. I read each play following along with the readings on the YouTube channel ‘The Shakespeare Network’, so when it says it’s 2.5 hours, like Caesar, that’s how long it will take, plus some breaks. Then I listen to the lecture. I only go further in if something really strikes me, and in one or two of them I have gone on to watch an adaption. Good luck!

Paul England

This is my first post so be gentle. Although I’m a member now, of one week’s standing, I’ve been following along with the reading list since January 2023 and War and Peace. As far as Shakespeare, when I started, I didn’t have Ben’s chronology but mine is close enough. It’s easily forgotten and worth saying,I think, that the plays should be watched as well as read and studied. I have just been immensely moved by Ian McKellen’s epic Lear and found that production to be really convincing overall, despite King Lear being a problem to stage. Some directing decisions were inspired I thought, actions implied in the script, like the Fool’s hanging, were made explicit in its proper place within the action. Not so Cordelia’s hanging which would have lessened the impact of Lear’s ‘Howl,howl,howl..’ speech. That needs to surprise and shock. And it did. It shocked and shook me. Today I sat down and read the play using the Shakespeare app which is mainly based on the 1st folio and does me fine. I’m also not too proud to ask ChatGPT4o to clear up various machinations of the plot (Gloucester sub-plot) that get away from me. Mainly the Albany/Goneril and Cornwall/Regan and Edmund machinations. Once the plot is secure (the app has a very helpful scene by scene synopsis) then I’m good to go. In fact, that’s what got me through ‘Infinite Jest’ - the fact that I found a detailed chapter by chapter synopsis that I could read in advance and then could relax and enjoy the ride. Lear has so much to appreciate in Shakespeare’s language, his portrayal of madness; The fool (professionally ‘mad’) Poor Tom (feigning) and Lear (real dementia onset). Cruelty and compassion rub shoulders in this play in excruciating ways. I’m also enjoying James Shapiro’s ‘The Year Of Lear’ which I’m sure has been mentioned elsewhere.

Tamera Cameron

My only experience with Shakespeare is Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth in high school. There was no inspiration behind the lessons and it all felt very box ticky. I'm so inspired by Ben's love of Shakespeare and just started The Comedy of Errors. I'm going in with an open mind and really appreciate the recommendation to find one thing that stands out per play. I'm also going to implement a rating system. This will likely take me longer than a year but it sounds like a good time regardless. Animal Farm and The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell, The Brothers Karamazov, and Yes to Life in Spite of Everything by Victor Frankl represent A plus to me.

Kim

Benjamin, just so you know, this video isn’t tagged with “Shakespeare project”. I’m mostly using tags for these kinds of projects (one tab open in my browser for each project) and this one didn’t appear.

Michael Hawker

1) What is your current relationship with Shakespeare? I am retiring from full time work and the Hardcore Literature 2025 Reading Program and the Shakespeare program are my new hobbies. I am reading Shakespeare in honour of my grandmother. She left school aged 12 in 1930 and by the time she was married at age 18 had read all of Shakespeare. We talked of this often when I was young and also her love of the metaphysical poets especially Andrew Marvell. I never studied literature at university, so this is my later in life substitute to fill that gap. 2) Have you read a writer's entire works before? If so, how did you find the experience? Many and mostly crime fiction writers. Just completed Ian Rankin again. 3) For readers working on a special author, who are you planning to read? Your answers will help our tailored discussion on this topic. For 2025 it will be Shakespeare. For future years, I will target Hardy, Dickens, Murakami, Walt Whitman, Graham Greene, Maugham 4) What are some examples of A+ works of literature in your personal canon? Some impactful books for me include The Magus (Revised Version) by John Fowles The Constant Gardener by John Le Carre A Passage to India by E M Forster Lust by Elfriede Jelinek Blindness by Jose Saramgo Soul Mountain by Gao Xingjian

Gholson Lyon
>>157722676

Michael, I am trying myself to read more Shakespeare, but alas still working a full-time job, so not sure I can do the entire Shakespeare program in just one year. I am working through the Sonnets and Hamlet now, and I bought Macbeth and King Lear, all of which are the single version Arden editions. I am reading just 1 or 2 sonnets per day, along with listening to them on Youtube by various actors. I also never studied literature in college, so trying to fill in the gap too, at age 50. Anyway, good luck with your reading program! I only joined this club about one month ago, but I love it thus far.

Samuel Thompson

I am completely new to Shakespeare and am thinking of tackling his complete works over the entirety of 2025 to get fully accounted with The Bard, I feel as though this will be a key stone in my reading and understanding of great literature and help me to further my goal of writing full length novel!

SusanG

I would say my relationship with Shakespeare is like my relationship with my first boyfriend who due to it being decades later now I can’t remember his name. I’m getting used to this platform and got cut off. So, I am reading King Lear after finding the You Tube channel. Now I am in the book club and see this entire journey to deeply know Shakespeare.

Camilla Danaher

I actually largely joined the Patreon because of this project! When I was younger and had more time, I used to have "Shakespeare Sundays" for myself where I read or reread a play, and sometimes made a little project for myself like scanning the meter or drawing a scene. But it's been way too long (a decade??) since I've sat down and read one of the plays, so I thought this would be nice. Plus, I haven't actually read all of them! I've never read the complete works of any author.

Ralph

My New Year's resolution! Just finished my first play!! ❤️ Shakespeare. You are an indispensable source of information!

Leslie Ostojich

My first experience of Shakespeare that I recall is a comparative study in my early high school years of Romeo and Juliet with West Side Story. We had a paperback with both plays in it. I fell in love with the musical which I guess I came by honestly. Both my parents were fans of Broadway musicals and made regular trips to New York to see them. Incidentally my first experience with Don Quixote was in the audience on my first visit to New York with them to see The Man of LaMancha at about the same age.

Stephanie Wojciechowski

Hello! I’m new to the club and so happy that you have a Shakespeare project. I have read Hamlet and Romeo & Juliet in Portuguese (my native language). Now, I will start reading all his work following this plan, this time in English. Thank you for providing great information and also a pdf, it makes it much easier to follow the program.

sharon brown

Hi Ben. I am planning to start the works in your order. I studied Julie's Caesar in school (though to be fair, that was many years ago so I don't remember all of it). I have also read Romeo and Juliet, A midsummer Night's Dream, King Lear and The Tempest. I am looking forward to revisiting these, especially King Lear and also all the plays I have sadly neglected so far in my reading.

NORMA FIGUEROA

I am new to reading Shakespeare and jumping in with The Winter's Tale. I find it very helpful to follow the play along with an audio reading. I am not sure I can get through a play in one sitting, so I am going for One Act at a time. I love the HC Book Club; this is my first month.

Walker Rowe
>>165818066

Hi. Are you making progress with The Winter's Tale? Which audiobook did you get? I got Arkangel Shakespeare full-cast (400 actors!) unabridged with Sir John Gielgud made in the year 2000. The blurb said "[Arkangel] is an acclaimed series of unabridged audio dramas covering all of Shakespeare’s plays". I didn't see any recommendation from Ben so just asked the internet which was the best/most famous. It won an award in 2004 2004 Audie Award for “Best Audio Drama". I've read 16 of Shakespeare's works but only discovered this month the idea of reading using an audio book. That helped me get through The Tempest. It certainly makes them easier to understand. Using the Arden Edition. Also using Judith Dench's and Harold Bloom's books as guides. She played two different characters at the same time in The WInter's Tale.

Sooz

Hi there, I am completely new to Shakespeare, apart from a 'viewing' of Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet back in school which consisted of a class full of 13 year old girls left alone in a tv room - we obviously got bored and boys and other things were discussed instead. I plan to read them in chronological order as suggested, along with an audio reading. I intend to read one act at a time atm.

Danny
>>159533161

My favorite plays are Hamlet, Merchant of Venice, and Macbeth. I giggled here and there during Twelfth Night. I read the Barnes & Noble paperback editions: when the book is open the notes are on the left page and the play is on the right page. I've tried others but the B&N paperback edition is the only one that's really stuck with my needs. I'm sure I could've spent a lot more money for something better, but for the price B&N is gold. I might do the Shakespeare Project next year. I don't think I'd be able to do the Shakespeare project and the reading syllabus at the same time.

Shana Z
>>168684065

I’m thinking about starting it too! I feel very behind though

Anna B.

I’m jumping in now to this amazing project. I’m going to start with my favorites - Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Julius Caesar , Macbeth and Anthony and Cleopatra, then read in order from there Benjamin’s chronological order. I’ll be keeping a journal on each one ! I am going to read the Folio and Pelican and Modern Library editions for each one. I just can’t resist the pelican editions with their cute covers. I may just dwell in each for a while - creating drawings, inspiration boards watching movies , looking at costumes etc. trying to make each one a project ! This is so exciting !

jack walsh

I’ve put totally engaging or immersing myself in Will for too long now. While this project was active, I sometimes took part in particular plays but avoided the commitment to take part in the entire project. However, my mind and consciousness haven’t been comfortable with my lack of commitment to a project that has, above any other of its kind, the ability to change me via a greater understanding of myself and the world I live in. So I’ve purchased the Norton complete works edited by Stephen Greenblatt, and I’m determined to take this journey with enthusiasm and love for learning. It’s exciting!!

Max Moloney
>>175350234

I too am plodding my way through them. I have found that using Shakespeare as a “break” from other works, is best, as it is much less daunting to just read a play when I feel like it. Makes it less daunting. Which are you on right now?

Alex

Any chance the links could be updated now the project is finished?

Amy C. Dennis

There was a recent lecture on ranking the complete works of Shakespeare which prompted me to come here and start the project for the first time. Last year I read Macbeth and Hamlet with the aid of the back catalogue, and am a bit intimidated to start with the “apprentice “ period , as I wonder if they will not be as enjoyable. Anyone joining the project recently?

Donna Malone

Hello from Massachusetts. I'm new to the Shakespeare Project. I'm thinking of starting with Richard III.

Rebecca Henry

My Thoughts on The Comedy of Errors This was my very first Shakespeare play, and honestly, I was a little nervous going into it. I read it from The Complete Works of Shakespeare while listening to the audio version our book club leader recommended, and that actually helped so much. Seeing and hearing the words at the same time made the language easier to follow, and I checked SparkNotes along the way just to make sure I didn’t miss any details. I was surprised by how funny and ironic the play is. I expected Shakespeare to be serious or hard to understand, but The Comedy of Errors was really entertaining. The misunderstandings and all the chaos from the mixed-up identities made me laugh, but it also made me think about how easily relationships and trust can get messed up when people don’t see the full picture. For my first Shakespeare, I’m glad I started with this one. It was light, fast-paced, and a good reminder that classic literature doesn’t have to be boring or confusing. It actually made me excited to keep going with the rest of the plays in the project.

Daryl

I'm currently working on a Shakespeare project of my own, but it's based on how I'm feeling at the time, rather than a chronological reading. This also means that sometimes I'm re-reading rather than moving onto the next one. I've found that the plays I've enjoyed the most are the ones I've read more than once, and some have jumped up my ranking after a revisit. I've never read the complete works of any writer before, and I have struggled with it at times, but breaking up the reading with other writers has been very helpful. My tiered ranking so far (which will likely give away my other favourite hobby of playing video games) is: S - Othello, Macbeth, Hamlet A - Julius Caesar, Tempest, As You Like It, Richard II B - Antony and Cleopatra, Merchant of Venice, Romeo and Juliet C - Midsummer Night's Dream, Richard III, Henry IV Part 1 D - Titus Andronicus My relationship with Shakespeare before this project was a negative one. I had a perception of him as somebody we were obliged to read at school, and who was irrelevant to our lives today. I'm so pleased to have been so wrong, and this experience has been thrilling thus far.

hardcoreliterature
>>195690050

I love that approach to Shakespeare, Daryl! He truly does make for one of the best 'mood' writers of all time. I'm currently reading through his works again following the First Folio arrangement. So, comedies, then histories, then tragedies. But I've also just been randomly picking up volumes that I'm yearning to return to depending on my mood too. Sometimes I just want to hang out in the tavern with Falstaff and Hal, other times, I want to drop in and see how our Prince of Denmark or Rosalind are doing. And fantastic personal rankings! I'm so thrilled that your relationship has changed from a negative to a positive one :) I really wish our school system did a better job with his plays!

Karen Costa

Just joined today and have ordered The Comedy of Errors. Am I really doing this? Am I really embarking on the Shakespeare project?

Florence Kallisti

Now embarking on the Shakespeare project! Are there editions of the complete works of Shakespeare that you especially recommend?

Tatia

Hi Florence and Karen, I too am embarking on this Shakespeare project. I would love to know which edition is the "best".

Lily
>>198405150

Hi Florence: I began my travel through Shakespear recently and am absolutely loving this Royal Shakespear Company complete edition. I found a hardcover for $10 used! https://youtu.be/iLKmcACukMg?si=Uwn92i7LyrHGYgTf I read along in this while I listen to full cast audio performance that are free on the Libby app

Lily
>>196114652

I felt the same way Karen. Well in now and am happy I began.

Tanya E

Yay! So excited! Thank you, Ben!

Kyle Smith

Really appreciate this, Ben, but the novels are probably all I can do this year. I might be able to dabble in the Bard but realistically you’ll have to excuse me if I seem a bit absent from this part of the curriculum. (But hey, you never know! I might have time to catch the odd performance on Amazon and then I’ll weigh in!)

Jonathon Glover

I’m so excited about this. I’m particularly looking forward to the first period, as I have I have only read 2 of those 11 plays (compared to the 2nd phase, where I have read all but 1 of the plays). Off the top of my head, here are 6 pieces of A+ works of literature in my canon: - ‘All My Sons’ by Arthur Miller - ‘The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay’ by Michael Chabon - ‘Giovanni’s Room’ by James Baldwin - ‘Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro - ‘Anna Karenina’ by Leo Tolstoy - ‘True Story of the Kelly Gang’ by Peter Carey

hardcoreliterature
>>99193336

Thank you, Kyle. Absolutely, please do weigh in on any of the plays that take your fancy if you happen to catch one! But there’s certainly enough fun to be had with the novels :)

Margie

I read some plays in hs, college, and during summer breaks when I wasn't taking teacher recertification courses or science field studies. I never read an author's entire collection. Should be challenging. I have read many classics during my life, and joined this group because I realized I forgot what War and Peace was about. This reading schedule will be easier for me after I retire in July. I have to read a lot for the classes I currently teach and prepare labs. I teach HS biology and environmental science. I will try to keep up, but I make no guarantees.

Cory

I'm excited to hop on board! I've seen/read the eight or ten of his best-known works plenty of times, but I'm looking forward to reengaging with them in this dedicated way. It's not quite "an author's full repertoire", but I have also made a personal commitment to work through August Wilson's Pittsburgh Cycle this year. Granted, that's only 10 of the 20 plays he wrote in his life, but it's been a beautiful opportunity to see how he changed as an author. For those unfamiliar, he highlighted Black life in America in each decade of the 20th century, one decade per play.

hardcoreliterature
>>99193615

You’ve done tremendously well to have read almost every one of those second phase plays, Jonathon! And I’m a huge fan of the A+ works and writers in your canon. All incredibly powerful!

Bill Markland

Very exciting. Just ordered the Norton Complete works in hardback - definitely worth it.

Jodie

I will admit to fear of this project. I will do it scared though! I have no real experience of Shakespeare since school which has been over 30 years ago.

Saleema

1) What is your current relationship with Shakespeare? Loved his work since Year 9 in high school. We read Romeo and Juliet. I was 14. The perfect age. It was 1997 and at the end of a wondrous year of learning the play Baz Luhrmann’s movie came out and we went to see it at the cinema. Still my most favourite film adaptation. Nowadays I visit the Globe as a groundling every summer. I adore the Bard! Excitingly this year I have begun introducing my 8 year old to Shakespeare. Together we are reading Tales of Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb. To his surprise (and my delight) he absolutely loves it. He begs to continue reading each night. After finishing A Midsummer Night’s Dream yesterday, today we watched the play via National Theatre at Home. It was so fun! 2) Have you read a writer's entire works before? If so, how did you find the experience?  Not yet but I hope this year. 3) For readers working on a special author, who are you planning to read? Your answers will help our tailored discussion on this topic. Plan to work on two of my favourite authors this year and read all their work. Contemporary: Zadie Smith. Classic: F. Scott Fitzgerald Would also like to read all of Ian McEwan’s work. 4) What are some examples of A+ works of literature in your personal canon? My personal canon looks like this: Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi NW by Zadie Smith The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald Trainspotting by Irving Welsh Noughts + Crosses by Malorie Blackman Brave New World by Aldous Huxley Atonement by Ian McEwan A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

Vajra Kantor

Just starting Shakespeare, but being amazed by his depth and richness.

Julie Grimes

This will be my 5th or 6th chronological reading of Shakespeare. Admittedly, I cheated last time and skipped Titus Andronicus, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Troilus and Cressida, and Anthony and Cleopatra because I intensely dislike those plays. Aside from Shakespeare, I have read everything by Austen, including her Juvenalia, all of Wordsworth (I'll never get that time back), and all of Browning (Robert), which I accomplished when I managed to track down an old copy of The Ring and the Book. Now that I have finally gotten my hands on an entire copy of Childe Harold, I hope to add Byron to the list. My A+ favor the Russians with W&P, Brothers Karmozov, Dr. Zhivago, and Zamyatin's We, then Bleak House and Dombey and Son, the aformentioned The Ring and the Book, Hamlet, The Return of the Native, Pride and Prejudice, and Anne of Green Gables. I sympathize with you regarding sitting in class with those who do not enjoy the literature. The American university system does not specialize as much as the European does, so no matter your focus you must take a little of everything. 100 and 200 level classes with those forced to be there was irritating. At the 400 level, English majors broke down into 3 types: Pre-law (the majority), Communications, and the actual English majors. I will never forget the whingeing of the three Communications majors in my Russian novel class when we read Anna Karenina and the Brothers K back to back! My son's Shakespeare theater troupe (ages 8-18) chooses their plays based on the specialties of the oldest actors they have. They have chosen Henry IV part 1 next, I suspect because they believe my son can pull off Falstaff. He does NOT want to play Falstaff as he is sick of playing the buffoon. He really wants Hotspur (to finally die on stage). How do you suggest I make Falstaff palatable? I, myself, prefer Hal so am not the best Falstaff advocate.

Julie Grimes
>>99196377

I'm currently teaching a Short 20th C class that pairs the history with the literature. We read Brave New World right after studying the Roaring Twenties. On the last go around with BNW (when I was teaching it as part of a Dystopian literature class), I noticed the odd obsession with zippers. It turns out that at that time, zippers had only made their appearance on children's clothing, so it was Huxley's further way of infantilizing the characters. This time, juxtaposing it with the jazz age, I realized how the references to canned music were a reflection on the proliferation of records and how records seemed to crystalize and deaden music (he takes real pot shots at jazz rhythms too). I highly recommend Yevgeny Zamyatin's We if you like BNW as We came first and seemed to have influenced BNW.

Cindy Hayes

My History of Shakespeare? I have read about six of his works and liked them fairly well. Most were read is school. I have however seen four or five others on stage and loved them completely. I am so looking forward to this project and purchased the beautiful Yale Shakespeare collection which was published in 1947 and is in perfect condition. These books are so gorgeous that I will be using a journal rather than marking them up. I adore being pushed to read outside my comfort zone and to work through such diverse genres as War and Peace and Shakespeare at the same time. I am starting tonight on The Comedy of Errors.

Tomorrow Night

Important question for Ben and everyone (sorry if you addressed it in the last years): most inspiring biography of Shakespeare? At this point, since we are doing it chronologically, it might be helpful.

Mary Anne Dufault

I have not read any Shakespeare since college which was quite some time ago. I am looking forward to this project. I think it will be a good companion reading to War and Peace which I am thoroughly enjoying. Ben, thank you for the effort you put into these lectures. I feel like my understanding and enjoyment of the classics is becoming much deeper as I go through the various books.

Ed Swain

I must admit I have not read Shakespeare since my high school days some 40 years ago. Joining this wonderful club and diving into the great works is so very new to me. I'll do my best to keep up and to enjoy these masterpieces. Grateful for such an incredible guide in Benjamin and a vibrant book club community!

Susan

Hello my fellow book lovers! I am so excited about this new project. I only started reading Shakespeare with this book club the other year, and have fallen in love with his sonnets. I have also enjoyed all the plays which we have been reading all of last year, my favourite being Romeo & Juliet. If you would have said to me a couple of years ago that I will enjoy Williams Shakespeare so much - I must admit I would have laughed (not thinking myself clever enough). I have just ordered Ardens complete works and am very excited to get started : )

Nick Adams

I will definitely be taking your advice and picking one great play to read first, to see the heights of his work. I only know Shakespeare from skimming Hamlet as a freshman in high school. We had a new teacher that year who gave a test on Hamlet with 150 multiple choice questions. Needless to say we all bounced off it and just crammed for the test. A few years later a different English teacher had us read "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" out loud in class, and I thoroughly enjoyed that. Looking forward to coming back to Shakespeare all these years later. Your story about your grandmother resonates with me. My grandfather got me interested in reading around the same age, when I felt I was falling behind. Looking back I think I just wasn't interested in the stories we were made to read in school. My grandfather was an avid Stephen King fan. I borrowed "The Long Walk" from him, and that changed so much for me. I was far too young for that book and, as you said, a lot went over my head, but I remember feeling amazed that something like that book existed. When he passed away he left me all his King books, each one he initialed and wrote the date he read it in. Your comment about keeping someone alive through reading was spot on I think.

Nephele Tempest

I'm looking forward to this, particularly to picking up the plays I have not yet read. Over the course of high school, I read maybe 6-8 of Shakespeare's plays, all of which got reread in university, along with probably a dozen or so more and a handful of the sonnets. My Shakespeare courses in university focused by genre, so tragedies and romances, or histories, etc., so it will be interesting to approach them chronologically. I am a bit curious about this order, Ben. I believe you mentioned toward the end of last year that you believed there was an argument to be made that Shakespeare wrote The Tempest last, but here you have a couple titles following it. Is the guiding chronology here performance date instead of when they were written? Thanks!

Cindy Hayes
>>99200865

The story of Ben’s grandmother struck a cord with me as well. My grandmother was born in 1901 and left school in 6th grade to help the family. I never saw her with a book, except the Bible. But when she died and we went through her belongings, we found a draw full of cigar boxes filled with poems she had cut out if the local paper over the years. I had no idea she was a closet poetry lover. I felt even closer to her at that point.

Andrea Ronkowski

While my first introduction to Shakespeare was through reading plays in school, it was seeing Ralph Fiennes play Richard II on stage that really sparked my love of the Bard. That said, I've only ever approached his plays as an actor (in high school and college) and as a theatergoer. I'm honestly a little intimidated to approach the works from a literary point of view, but here goes nothing!

Brian Wood-Koiwa

I’m a relative newcomer to Shakespeare. I’ve read (I think) Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth during high school many decades ago and of course several film adaptations of various works throughout the years. I have recently read King Lear just after joining Hardcore. I wanted to appreciate Shakespeare through the club and chose King Lear because it is one of the more “famous” plays that I knew nothing about - just the title. I followed along with Ben’s lectures on the play while reading it, which helped immensely. I just found out about this project while listening to Ben’s New Year post posted a few days ago and thought it would be a good time to delve deeper into Shakespeare. Thus, after watching this post, I have decided to give it a try!

June.

My dad left school at age 12 and spent the rest of his 85 years catching up with the Complete Works of Shakespeare and the the Oxford book of English verse.When he died Imade sure both remmoved to my house! The Complete Works has wonderful picture, including Ellen Terry, but it is too heavy to hold now and the print is tiny.Thank you to those above who have suggested good editions.Do they come singly?I would be willing to buy one a week if such is possible........Now to Ben's questions.At school,a good o e, a play every year.The dream,merchant of Venice,Twelfth Night,Asyou like it,and Macbeth -and the latter in college.on stage,Romeo and Juliet,King Lear, Acomedy of Errors and the whole Kings series by the BBC in the early days of BBC2. Most recently,The Tempest as a very old student at Uni.Myhony Trollope and introduced him to a newly arrived South African lawyer in Canada who loved him too. As a child,all of Arthur Ransome,when the new public library opened.,going on to Agatha Christie!

Margaret F Haines

Truly appreciate this opportunity to continue learning about Shakespeare. Over my lifetime I have hopscotched through many of the plays (in school, attending theater performances, completing my masters literature work, teaching high school English). My grandmother, as yours, had a keen appreciation for the life lessons in Shakespeare's work - she frequently quoted a phrase or short passage as a comment on family dramas :-) I look forward to our chronological journey through the plays.

Sharon Voeltz

I’ve read a few but I’ve been lucky to see a lot of the plays. Much Ado About Nothing is my favorite. Each June, we have Shakespeare In The Lawn. Looking forward to reading all of Shakespeare’s plays.

Mick Lockey

I studied several of Shakespeare's plays at university, as part of a special year long project. (I was an English Lit major.) Over the years I have seen many of the plays, both in live performance and TV productions. I think my favorite plays are Antony and Cleopatra, and King Lear. As for reading an entire author's work, I would turn to Joan Didion---I've read all of her books, from essays to fiction. I have read many of Henry James's novels as well. I have also read quite of bit of Susan Sontag, but that is mostly her literary and cultural criticism; her novels were less successful, I thought. Looking forward to the Shakespeare project, if I can keep up with everything else...lol

Shelley Riden

I was saturated in the language of the King James Version of the Bible when I was a child, and so when I first heard a Shakespeare poem (my dad quoted it) I was entranced. When I was teenager, I used to say that if I were wealthy, I'd pay Richard Burton to read Shakespeare to me. Not being wealthy (smile) I got a job. When I first moved out on my own, alone, (away from the noisy five children in our fam) I used to play classical music and read aloud to myself. Eventually I went to Uni for a degree, and I took a class in S'peare - I was so excited. Sadly, S's works began to lose some of their wonder for me. I found I didn't care what other people thought of it, or even what the words meant; it was the glorious music of the language that drew me in. In fact, I didn't want to think about it all, only experience it. That was over 50 years ago. Since then, I've attended many S'peare plays (The Tempest being my favorite)and read many sonnets. So, I came to love Shakespeare again; I even named my first dog "Thisbe" (from A Midsummer Night's Dream). However, I, for some reason, stopped reading the plays. So, now, I'm already plunging in to the assignment; I've read Titus Andronicus and Parts I,II, and II of Henry VI. And though these will not be my favorites - ever - I am increasingly excited to get to the plays I know and love; and, I'm even more excited to make them part of my daily life again. Have I said how happy I am to have found this bookclub?

Chrissy

How can I read War and Peace, as well as the complete works of Shakespeare, in the one year, without my head exploding?! That was my immediate reaction to this video. Ben’s lectures always excite and motive me, but this one, not so much! Instead, I’m feeling panic, and, if I.am honest with myself, more than a little bit of self doubt. Which is exactly why I’m going to do it. Shakespeare and I are not friends. . He’s like that band that everyone else thinks is so cool, but you just can’t listen to. I want to learn to love and appreciate him, but he may as well be writing in Venusian. I feel a little embarrassed admitting it here, but I just don’t get Shakespeare, and I don’t understand what the fuss is all about. But I dearly want to. So, I’m going to read out of my depth, and face my fears at the same time. This should be character building! I’ve never (yet) read the entire works of any author, but this year I intend on reading the complete works of the Brontes, including poetry and juvelanlia. I had originally intended to do a chronological reading of Dickens in 2023, but the sisters have completely captivated me (and I may need to sleep at some point 🫣) As for my personal canon - this was harder than I thought! (In rough order of reading) Little Women, by Louisa M. Alcott Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley The Song of Achilles, by Madeline Miller Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte

Sid Collins

Really excited about this one, Ben! I have only recently picked back up into Shakespeare thanks to your videos and have thus far completed Hamlet and will be finishing Macbeth shortly. Like many, Shakespeare was forced on me in school and much that we learned went right over my head. I have had to come back to The Bard in my own way to draw meaning from his works. That is precisely what I'm doing now and I am greatly enjoying it. I have not yet read an author's completed works, though I have read perhaps 90% of Tolkien's works, only missing some translations and posthumous publications. In that way, it is really interesting to delve into the mind of a great author to understand their values and perspectives over multiple decades and even genres. As such, I MUST give the Lord of the Rings and A+. Every time I reread the trilogy, I see a new part of myself reflected back at me. I cannot wait to read it again with the book club. Other A+ works include Frankenstein, Waiting for Godot, and Siddartha.

Irene

I loved this video so much!! I’ve been a lifelong Shakespeare fan, as well, ever since my mom got me to watch Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet when I was still in elementary school. Hamlet became my favorite by middle school, and I’ve loved everything Shakespeare ever since. That doesn’t mean I’ve seen or read all of his works, so I’m pumped to do this reading challenge this year. I remember being so excited to take an Intro. to Shakespeare class in undergrad - assuming I needed an introduction in the academic sense and choosing not to take the higher level courses right off the bat. They were saving Hamlet for last, and I couldn’t wait. I showed up the day of that class with my old, paperback copy, pages falling out and dog-eared, and the professor proceeded to tell us that Hamlet was really too long, and he would do his best to get us through it quickly. I died a little inside at that, and I’ve learned to really cherish people in my life who love Shakespeare as much as I do. 1) What is your current relationship with Shakespeare? Undying hero worship? 2) Have you read a writer's entire works before? If so, how did you find the experience?  If I have, it’s not be intentional. 4) What are some examples of A+ works of literature in your personal canon? For me, Mervyn Peake’s Titus Groan and Gormenghast are A+. Hamlet, of course, is A+. I also really love Iris Murdoch’s writing and Connie Willis’s Doomsday Book. I’m sure there are more, and I’ll think of them later, but these are tops that come to mind as I type!

Gail Overstreet

I'm quite excited to revisit Shakespeare this year! An English Lit major in my undergraduate years, one of my most memorable classes was taught by noted Shakespearan scholar Stephen Greenblatt, current editor of the Norton Shakespeare, as well as bestselling books on the Bard. Greenblatt is known for "New Historicism" which places the plays in the context of their cultural and historical times - his lectures came alive with details of Shakespeare's era, and at end of semester, many students acted out scenes in-class from their favorite plays . During summers, I would venture to the Ashland Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon - so many wonderful plays! Also notable during this time period was 6 months as an exchange student based at Oxford University, seeing Taming of the Shrew in Stratford-upon-Avon, visiting Shakespeare's birthplace, and taking frequent journeys to the National Theatre in London, where a highlight was sitting in the first rows watching actor Ian McKellan's astounding Richard III. Such a rich and memorable time in my life, and thrilled to leap into these classics once again!

Irene

I loved this video so much!! I’ve been a lifelong Shakespeare fan, as well, ever since my mom got me to watch Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet when I was still in elementary school. Hamlet became my favorite by middle school, and I’ve loved everything Shakespeare ever since. That doesn’t mean I’ve seen or read all of his works, so I’m pumped to do this reading challenge this year. I remember being so excited to take an Intro. to Shakespeare class in undergrad - assuming I needed an introduction in the academic sense and choosing not to take the higher level courses right off the bat. They were saving Hamlet for last, and I couldn’t wait. I showed up the day of that class with my old, paperback copy, pages falling out and dog-eared, and the professor proceeded to tell us that Hamlet was really too long, and he would do his best to get us through it quickly. I died a little inside at that, and I’ve learned to really cherish people in my life who love Shakespeare as much as I do. 1) What is your current relationship with Shakespeare? Undying hero worship? 2) Have you read a writer's entire works before? If so, how did you find the experience?  If I have, it’s not been intentional. 4) What are some examples of A+ works of literature in your personal canon? For me, Mervyn Peake’s Titus Groan and Gormenghast are A+. Hamlet, of course, is A+. I also really love Iris Murdoch’s writing and Connie Willis’s Doomsday Book. I’m sure there are more, and I’ll think of them later, but these are tops that come to mind as I type!

Morgan Battista

I’m so excited. I haven’t read Shakespeare since school, but I remember it felt like it unlocked something for me at the time. And I loved it.

Stephanie Denton

I am equal parts intimidated and excited about this reading project! 1) What is your current relationship with Shakespeare? I read a few of his plays in high school. I didn't understand why he was so popular until we got to Macbeth and Hamlet. These two are brilliant and I'm looking forward to revisiting them all these years later. 2) Have you read a writer's entire works before? If so, how did you find the experience? No, but I think it's going to be an interesting and informative experience. 3) For readers working on a special author, who are you planning to read? Your answers will help our tailored discussion on this topic. I'm planning on a deep read of Austen this year. 4) What are some examples of A+ works of literature in your personal canon? I need to give this some thought but off the top of my head: Hamlet, Stoner (John Williams), and Persuasion (Jane Austen).

Jonathon Glover

If anyone is looking for something a little bit different. Here is a wonderful adaptation of King Richard II presented as a radio play. It was originally to be performed as a part of NY Free Theatre in the Park, but was appropriated for radio due to COVID lockdowns. https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/free-shakespeare-podcast-richard-ii It looks at the play through the lens of the Black Lives Matter Movement, is produced and performed by a complete cast of People of Colour and is truly excellent. It is a full performance where each act is bookended with interviews with the cast and scholars about the work. Great stuff all round. IMO, Richard II is severely underrated and offers a really excellent central conflict between Richard and Bollingbrooke. The Hollow Crown Richard II is likewise outstanding. EDIT: I also think it would be a great starting off point for those who want to dive in to Shakespeare, but not through one of the ones you sat through in high school.

Gerard Calabro

1) What is your current relationship with Shakespeare? I've always enjoyed reading Shakespeare in high school. Macbeth and Hamlet were foundational works in the development of my affinity towards literature at the time. After high school, I took a class on Shakespeare that introduced me to works I fell in love with even more than Hamlet: King Lear and The Tempest. Ever since then, I have been trying to read through all of Shakespeare's works, but this provides me with the perfect opportunity to do so. 2) Have you read a writer's entire works before? If so, how did you find the experience? The two best reading projects of my life were reading all of Toni Morrison and Thomas Pynchon's novels. 3) For readers working on a special author, who are you planning to read? Your answers will help our tailored discussion on this topic. Sometime next year I plan on a deep read of Faulkner or Kafka. I haven't decided just yet. 4) What are some examples of A+ works of literature in your personal canon? The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky, King Lear, Paradise by Toni Morrison, The Magic Mountain by Mann, Moby Dick, Mason & Dixon by Pynchon, Jane Eyre, Pale Fire by Nabokov, and The Waves by Woolf.

Jane

A life long love ! I miss terribly my trips to Stratford and the Globe and all the other venues whether grand or amateur. I usually fit in a couple of productions on my visits home. I have almost everything in several different editions :) so I am looking forward to being able to put all of this into some semblance of order with the chronology. Thank you Ben This year I am going to be exploring the novel , memoirs and poetry In the interwar years so not just one writer yet. I am looking at the Mitfords this week. I try to keep a balance between the classics and more lightheaded reading. For me one of the best novels of all time is Scott Fitzgerald ´s The Great Gatsby. Hip hip hooray for Freytag’s pyramid and plot. Also Vera Brittain s Testament of Youth which should be compulsory reading :) I feel that university courses by nature can be tough and the pace relentlessly stressful so much has to be crammed in in just three years at an age when you are just discovering who you are or not. I remember that it felt for me like being sucked into a whirlwind and then three years later being spat out totally disorientated. Somewhere along the road we believe that « after university «  our literary passion will end with our finals when what really happens is that it is just the beginning and we are free for the rest of our lives to indulge in whatever book we want to read.

Deb

I have been a lover of Shakespeare for probably 40 plus years. I first met him In high school with the Merchant of a Venice and of course the Scottish play. I played Lady Macbeth. Ha hah. Hamlet has to be my favourite. That is the one I read for enjoyment the most. I am so looking forward to this journey. I have never read all his works and am so glad this year it will be so. Thanks so much for this project. I love it already.

Ann Nicholls

Wonderful lecture, Ben. I haven't had any real exposure to Shakespeare since high school some 40 years ago. There, we did Macbeth and Othello; both of which I loved. I'm looking forward to reading all his works and discovering which ones I will love, and which I won't.

June.

I played Macbeth and Bottom and I, m a girl! Totally agree that Testament of Youth should be required reading . You have reminded me that I read all of Mervyn Peakes Ghomenghast and I have his drawings.This club is going to bring back some wonderful memories.

Lord Vader

Your intro was so good. Sorry if this isn’t nicely organized, I’m typing from my phone. Two things I relate with when you talk about coming from a working class family where no one ever went to higher education. I find it interesting that just because someone doesn’t go to university like you said it doesn’t make those people any less intelligent. The second thing was the fact you said that you didn’t understand anything that you read but you “felt” what your were reading. I’m going to be honest I’m in school now and it has been very challenging managing what I learn from the orderly mathematics and trying to understand these challenging books in my free time. I don’t want to not read, in fact I get no fulfillment if I don’t read and I sit on my phone or something, it’s that I exhausted all of my cognitive strength on my math. It’s nice to know however that I am learning even if I am not consciously aware of it. I don’t know why but the next day I have so much knowledge of things I suddenly know it makes sense now. I keep thinking of Sancho Panza who while he doesn’t know everything and is a fool he is a WISE fool. I feel like wisdom is everything we don’t know and knowledge is everything we know. Wisdom encapsulates knowledge. Sometimes we expand from knowledge into wisdom, but I never though of doing the reverse embodying wisdom (what we don’t know or something very vague) until it becomes clear through practice and experience. So the next time I read I won’t stress out and I’ll remind myself I’m doing something meaningful when I’m done idk lol. I think I remember saying Shakespeare was the opposite of Cervantes in how he helps you listen to yourself. Maybe he can help me with this, but I’m the only one who’s going to help get my own thoughts together.

Badbag

Thank you so much for sharing some of your life Ben. I particularly heard you say that you read Shakespeare so you could converse with your grandmother. Such a beautiful thing - talking and sharing understanding of books across generations. I am trying to be that inspiration for my nieces (I have no children) so I curate reading and books for my youngest nieces. I am looking forward to saying that I’ve read all of Shakespeare. (And then it’s about re-reading for deep meaning.) So I am all in on this project.

Carol Keller

A part of me came alive as an eighth grader reading Romeo and Juliet! I had great high school English teachers who deepened my love of Shakespeare and other classic works. So much so that as an incoming freshman at IU in the fall of 1983 I was able to get into Professor Charles Forker’s Introduction to Shakespeare class in which we read a play a week, 14 in all. It was glorious. He was an amazing teacher and scholar. I carried around those 14 individual paperback editions with all my notes for years, but after divorce and more moving and remarriage, I can’t seem to put my hands on them now! I’ll keep looking but I’m sure you can appreciate my sadness. I’m so looking forward to being back in the plays and sharing the experience. One thing I love about Shakespeare is that he is quotable and relevant today. I’m looking forward to recharging the way I have sprinkled his words into my everyday language. Your story inspired me to know that my enthusiasm might be infectious in my grandchildren’s lives. I’m working on completing the works of John Steinbeck and I’m currently carrying a copy of Travels With Charley to reread. I say “carrying a copy” as my husband, Charlie, and I have set out on a new adventure traveling cross country in an RV with a standard poodle named Zelda. I’m savoring Steinbeck by usually reading one a year. Oh and, by the way, I named my daughter Miranda.

Anna M.

For someone who hasn't read a lot of Shakespeare so far, do you recommend reading in chronological order or rather the approach that was taken last year?

Graham Smith

Although I am British, my home is Baku, Azerbaijan. Many people ask me why Azerbaijan. Mainly my partner. I teach here in Baku both English & Literature. Currently, we are doing IGCSE, AS and A-Level. Shakespeare, fortunately for me figures in almost every lesson and as I am sure you know that most exams have a drama section and usually there are two plays worked on for each exam. So for IGCSE, we have Twelfth Night and Othello, Measure for Measure at AS Level and finally King Lear in A-level. Our Prose reading is Jane Eyre and Dubliners (James Joyce) and poetry is Carol Ann Duffy and Emily Dickinson. Personally, I have grown to love Shakespeare in my latter years and always find something new whenever I read him. During the 2020 Pandemic I found myself stranded in America. I decided to join the Shakespeare Association of America and delivered virtual lessons and presentations to various bodies around the States. My biggest contribution to the Shakespeare association in the US was to Mind Map every play and deliver presentations on each at various programmes and institutions. Please find attached a link to a single Mind Map which will give you links to all the Mind Maps per play. This is the link https://bit.ly/35Ffli9 These maps are free to use and can be downloaded, a word of warning though if you do not have the iThoughts software a PDF copy is available for download. If you have any questions about any of the mind maps please get in contact with me and I will try and resolve your query. Happy viewing everyone.

Jonathon Glover
>>99226994

Ben was saying in the Lecture that his first body of work is not as strong as his later stuff. I think they went through 12 classic plays last year. That would probably be the way I would go if I was starting my Shakespeare journey. Whatever you choose, I know it will be a rewarding one.

Clare Shepherd

Like Shelley Riden I was brought up on daily reading of the King James Bible. My mother was a fundamentalist, and eventually I became an Humanist. I still have respect for Christianity, and many of it's tenets. However, I am part Jewish and have respect for that too. Both strands came together in my love of Shakespeare, which I was introduced to by my grandfather, who's taught me to read, and loved Shakespeare. At about 7 or 8, I persuaded my grandfather to get me a one volume edition of Shakespeare. Eventually, it fell to bits and I have the Arden and Riverside one volume editions, plus the Everyman too. However, since I have a newly acquired habit of annotation, I am gradually getting the single volumes of the Arden 3 series, beautiful books. In my twenties I met Professir Wilson Knight who encouragedme to make Shakespeare a lifelong study. I have done that, much to the enrichment and heightened joy in my life. Recently, I have done FutureLearn courses on Shakespeare, the best was done by Jonathan Bate. Since finding Ben's work, I have enjoyed his lectures on Shakespeare immensely. I am looking reread to this project as I have never read the plays chronologically. Other authors I have read all of their works are Thomas Hardy, including the poems, Dickens, Jane Austen, George Eliot, the Brontes, Trollope, most of Sir Walter Scott, Burns, T S Eliot, Dylan Thomas, Longfellow, W H Auden and John Cowper Powys, and Wilson Knight. If you think that is a lot, well I'm 76 and have been reading since I was 3. I also like to read everything, if I like an author.

Susan Graham

So excited! I have loved Shakespeare my whole life. Just getting ready to read Macbeth with my AP class and we always have so much fun with it. I have gaps in my reading that I’ve always wanted to close and this will be such an awesome way to do it.

Caroline P

Helloooo, I am so very, very, totally, enthusiastically up for this. I have read the twelve plays we did in the Bookclub last year and completely fell in love with Shakespeare. Totally. I have a few worries.. I am worried that reading the first plays might make me lose some of that love in frustration of waiting for the ones I love. I am worried about keeping up. I am not at a stage where I can read these plays quickly.. I still need a fair bit of time to understand and then digest what is being said. This isn’t a downside of Shakespeare because I have enjoyed taking my time and have come out of that feeling much more of a connection with the plays. But keeping up is going to be difficult even tho I have lots of reading time. But this project is so important to me I have decided that I might prioritise it and have to skip a big read during the course of the year. Tho that will be hard. I could give up sleep.. other than that time will be limiting. Third worry..I have been slowly collecting the RSC play script books but some of the plays are not available, and all the individual books are going to be quite expensive. So I am debating a complete works and maybe in a kindle version with the aim to buy the ones I find I love in book form. But I do love a book I can write in.. so I am all of a dither. I looked at the RSC complete works and it seems that has clickable links for obscure words, which might help. I fear the Arden complete works might have font size issues for some of us who are … umm age challenged in the eyesight department. I suppose failure isn’t a worry tho.. because even if it takes forever it will be a brilliant project.

John Ward

Great intro Ben! I was lucky to attend a school with an excellent English department and studied 5 of his plays there. About 40 years ago I bought the BBC box set of all his plays and have slowly covered all these in alphabetical order whilst always watching any local performances of his plays each year. So I am really looking forward to going through them again in chronological order to give a different perspective. My favourite to-date remains Alls Well that Ends Well. As well as the works of Shakespeare I have also read all the main works of John Cowper Powys, Thomas Pynchon and Proust. The one important common factor of these writers is the quality and beauty of the prose.

Caroline P
>>99234773

Ps my A+ books are Anthony and Cleopatra, Macbeth, Moby Dick, Ulysses, Wuthering Heights, Lincoln in the Bardo, Proust and Ovids Metamorphosis… but I know there are more waiting in the wings and this short list is actually much longer if I thought more. These are the immediate ones and ones I can’t walk past in a book shelf without needing to lay my hand on the spines in greeting. And this list is not including poetry

Steven McVicar

All of Shakespeare in one year? I'll give it a go. What have I got to lose? I'm not completely new to Shakespeare. A long time ago, in a school not so far, far away Shakespeare was a big part of our English syllabus. I remember A Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice, Julius Ceasar and Macbeth. The latter two I enjoyed the most. I'm looking forward to this and hope I can keep up with the project for the full year.

Michael Dobos

1. My current relationship with Shakespeare is one of respect and intimidation. I've read MacBeth, Hamlet, Julius Caesar, Richard III, Othello, and A Mid-Summer Night's Dream. These plays were extremely powerful to me. I read them when I was in high school, maybe one or two in college. There were portions I did not understand in terms of the speech because of, I believe, what were expressions or slang at the time. A few of the plays I read in Washington Press Square editions. In those particular books, the page on the right had the play, and the page on the left had the notations explaining some of the more difficult parts. I particularly loved those editions, but I don't believe they exist anymore. So I just ordered The Ardens Complete Works from Amazon. 2. I've read most of Richard Russo and Cormac McCarthy (not counting his two most recent), as well as the small collection of Michel Faber. I certainly enjoyed seeing the differences in the author between books, but I do have a reticence in identifying with an author. Any author. I don't want my appreciation/adjudication of a work to be colored by my personal feelings of the author as a person. I feel as if you like the author as a person, you might be too forgiving of his work and therefore not judge them truly for their merit. I know that might be controversial, but I am a bastard like that. 3. I'm thinking about reading Cormac McCarthy as my special author. I read some of his books when I was younger, say 20 years ago, so I believe my wisdom has increased as my ability as a reader has as well. I want to reread what I've read and finally read the ones I haven't. I also feel The Hardcore is a great place to do so since there are so many members who seem to love McCarthy. 4. I've already mentioned some of the A+ authors here, but as for particular works, Blood Meridian is probably the best modern novel out there. Another book which is an astounding masterpiece is Michel Faber's The Crimson Petal and the White. That's a novel that as experimental, bold, ballsy, and different. Faber takes a real challenge--to write a Victorian novel, but with the sensibilities and reality of today's literature--and knocks it out of the park. Another A+ is The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien, another Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson, and another two are both by Jonathan Lethem being Motherless Brooklyn and The Fortress of Solitude. I don't mean to leave the ladies out, so I give an A+ to all of the works (three novels) of Donna Tartt. They are The Secret History, The Little Friend, and The Goldfinch. I know this isn't a group for graphic novels, so I will only mention one here on the off chance someone reads this and is moved to give it a try. Kill or be Killed by Ed Brubaker and artist Sean Phillips. That writer/artist duo have produced a lot and I'd recommend any and all of their work to any serious novel reader. Thanks to all who read my lengthy comment!

hardcoreliterature
>>99193891

I’m honoured to hear we have a biology and environmental science teacher reading with us, Margie! I’ve been personally developing a very keen interest in this area and trying to make up for lost time. Retiring in July is an exciting life milestone! Are you looking forward to it?

hardcoreliterature
>>99194200

I’m excited you’re hopping on board, Cory! Having experienced so many of his best known works will make this a truly interesting project for you. It’s quite extraordinary to see where the writer of Hamlet got his grounding and how he developed. Your personal commitment to August Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle sounds incredibly exciting. You’ve sent me down a rabbit hole to learn more about his works - so thank you so much for that! Would you have any advice for me to get started reading him myself? Do you recommend reading them in the order they are set or first written?

hardcoreliterature
>>99194478

I’m so thrilled to hear that, Bill. The Norton Complete Works is such an exciting tome to have winging its way to you!

Michael Dobos
>>99230665

Hello Clare! I often wish I had read the King James as a child. My parents were not religious, so I got into reading the Bible rather late. I don't use it so much as a religious text as a use it as a piece of literature, perhaps the greatest piece of literature of all time. It has so many stories in it, I think there's something to please everyone. The writing style is truly something to contemplate since the Bible has been such an influence on nearly all the authors of the English language. I recommend you to read the novels of Richard Russo, perhaps "Mohawk" or "Empire Falls." They are reminiscent to me of shortened versions of Dickens novels in terms of the characters and their adventures both in comedies of errors as well as life-threatening idiocy. Hope you are well.

Denise Powers

Ben, I can't tell you how many times you have blown me away with your lectures, but this is another shining star in the universe of stars. Thank you for your vulnerability and talking so frankly about things that were obviously very painful to you at the various points in your life. Your description of those times resonated deeply with me this morning as I watched this video as it helped me give language to some of the things I am feeling myself right now. From the bottom of my heart - thank you! My relationship with Shakespeare: I think it is most fair to say that in high school when it was introduced to me, I felt a strong pull to it, but I also felt a strong frustration that I did not understand every word, let alone the philosophies and sentiments. We were also obligated to memorize soliloquies and recite them in front of the class. I would work hard to memorize the pieces and then fall apart from fear standing at the front of the class. Ah, the trials of youth! I bought the Oxford Complete Works many years ago, vowing that at some point I was going to get my hands dirty in it, but instead I focused on building my career and I shoved my love of reading aside, or at least, I binged, devouring and racing to get to the end so I could start something else. I did not pick up that volume until last year as part of this club. Just before Christmas, my friend and I went to see Much Ado About Nothing (we saw a BBC version at the cinema) and she showed so much joy and passion for Shakespeare that I wanted to give her a copy of the Complete Works, but none could be found and so I gave her my own copy. That really did feel like giving a gift, because it had been mine and I loved it, even if I hadn't spent much time with it. I collect books and this one was special to me, not because I read the plays, but because I knew it was something that I wanted and needed, I was just afraid of it. I have not read a complete works by a single author before, although I think the closest I got was LM Montgomery's Anne of Green Gable series when I was young. How I loved those stories and the characters! I have read most of Hemingway's short stories and a number of the novels (as well as many of his letters). I have been thinking about the special author project a little bit and my first inclination was to read all of Cormac McCarthy's work. That is not a definitive decision yet, but that is what I am thinking about. Maybe it is the darkness of his writing that is attracting me right now. Love the place you're in! My A+ canon: Wuthering Heights Moby Dick Handmaid's Tale Pride and Prejudice Jane Eyre Great Expectations Anna Karenina Kite Runner Again, let me express my gratitude to you, Ben, and to this whole group for all that you share and for being the place where all of us can experience these great works and better understand them.

Mirjam

I'm really a newby to Shakespeare. Of course living a couple of decades in this world you cannot help to know some 'cliches' from the plays, but the first time I really engaged with Shakespeare was with this bookclub with reading (and listening to) a Winters Tale and the Tempest. Like some of you I feel a bit intimidated by the prospect of a whole year of Shakespeare next to all the other big books we are planning to read, but I will give it a go and see how I fare. And thanks to you all for providing your A+ lists with lots of more new books and authors, some of which I know but many I do not. I only wonder where to find the time :) I should quit my day time job!

Matthew Annable

Really looking forward to this. I've probably seen about three-quarters of the plays on stage at some point - some of them, like Lear, Macbeth, Twelfth Night I must have seen half a dozen times or more, others like Titus Andronicus and Timon of Athens just the once. That means I've already got some fairly well-entrenched favourites: Lear, Richard II and Measure for Measure are probably my top three. But in many cases my judgement will have been principally based upon a particular inspirational production (or even how comfortable the seats were - I'm afraid productions at The Globe lose marks on that alone!) rather than a fair, like-for-like comparison. I'll be interested to see if my prior judgements change over the next year as a result of this exercise. With regard to other A+ works in my personal 'canon', a Top 5 might include The Aeneid, Bleak House, Atonement, Catch 22 and Winnie-the-Pooh. All works I've gone back to on many occasions for a variety of reasons, and all of which have given me huge pleasure over many, many years.

Steven McVicar
>>99235830

Hi Michael, I also love Cormac McCarthy. Blood Meridian is the stand out but eveverything else I've read is great. I bought the 2 latest novels and can't wait to read them. All I need to do is read War and Peace first, all of Shakespeare, a few more hefty tomes and then I can read the new McCarthy's.

Steven McVicar

2) Have you read a writer's entire works before? If so, how did you find the experience? I’ve read every fictional work by Paul Auster. His novels are so bizarre and trippy that I got hooked instantly and read everything by him I could get my hands on. His latest novel 4321 is considered his magnum opus by many but I was hugely disappointed by it. 3) For readers working on a special author, who are you planning to read? Your answers will help our tailored discussion on this topic. I don’t have plans to do this anytime soon but here’s 3 authors I want to read the complete works of: Charles Dickens Kurt Vonnegut Dostoevsky 4) What are some examples of A+ works of literature in your personal canon? I’m going for 5 different authors that I’ve read in the last year or so: Mary Shelley – Frankenstein Kurt Vonnegut – Mother Night Hilary Mantel – The Wolf Hall trilogy Frank Herbert – Dune, Dune Messiah, Children of Dune Herman Hesse – Steppenwolf

hardcoreliterature
>>99198356

Nice one, Varja :) You have such an exciting journey before you. I’m so happy you’re already finding his work to be rich and deep!

hardcoreliterature
>>99198717

Wow! Your fifth or sixth chronological reading! That’s incredibly impressive, Julie. I love that you’ve read all of Austen, Wordsworth, and Browning. Robert Browning was my special focus in my first year of university. I recently secured an 1891 three-volume set of The Ring and the Book from my favourite second hand bookshop. I’ve been loving going through it all slowly. It’s fantastic to hear your son’s troupe are doing Henry IV - and he’s playing Falstaff! I’m like you, I find myself much more in sympathy with Hal. I get him, and feel like I’m much more a Hal than a Falstaff. But I must say that Falstaff is simply one of Shakespeare’s all time greatest characters. One of the four “inexhaustible” ones, as A. C. Bradley said. He’s incredibly funny - the cause of wit in other men, as well as being witty himself! Surely everybody would love to spend the night carousing and enjoying some sack with Sir John? Perhaps he need not play him as a complete buffoon :)

Aaron Marion

I have never read Shakespeare in my life. I look forward to doing this journey and experiencing the Bard as chronologically as possible. I’m going in with the freshest eyes, looking for the nuggets that speak to me, while simultaneously looking for the parts that have spoken to culture for centuries. You mentioned that a friend experienced Shakespeare and found it cliche. I revel in being able to find where such cliches originated. My current plan is to do this with the group, read Shakespeare in a year. Over the next couple years I hope to deep dive into some of my favorites using the back catalog. Then, in possibly five or six years time, do this again, read it all in a year, see how I have changed, how my understandings have changed, and how Shakespeare has changed with the onslaught of time and understanding .

hardcoreliterature
>>99199454

Having read six of his works and watched another five gives you a truly solid grounding, Cindy! The Yale Shakespeare are such beautiful volumes. What a joy to be working your way through them. I’m glad you’re opting for a journal instead of marking them! I couldn’t bear to mark such gorgeous editions either.

hardcoreliterature
>>99200237

Great question. Peter Ackroyd has a tremendous biography. He really brings the era vividly alive. I also cherish the biographical works of Lois Potter, Hesketh Pearson, and Peter Alexander. But if you’re looking for just one superb bio, go for Ackroyd!

hardcoreliterature
>>99200436

Thank you so much, Mary Anne. I really appreciate that, and am so happy you’re getting so much out of the classics! I can’t wait to hear your thoughts on Shakespeare. I agree it will be a terrific companion to W&P. Tolstoy and Shakespeare are both titans of literature :)

hardcoreliterature
>>99200446

I’m so keen to hear how you find Shakespeare forty years on, Ed. You’ll be bringing such a wealth of life experience and wisdom to the works. It will be fascinating to hear what you see in them! And thank you so much for your kind words. I’m so grateful you’re reading with us!

Dan Eades

I read nearly all of Shakespeare's plays in college and we read them chronologically. I have read a number at various times throughout my life, either before or after a performance or a film. The plays I know best are Lear, The Tempest, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet, The Taming of the Shrew, Richard III, Othello, and The Winter's Tale. I have always found the history plays difficult and hope to achieve a better appreciation of Falstaff this time through. Most recently, I gave what for me was a deep reading of Lear, provoked as I recall by Kurosawa's RAN. I must admit to a foreboding, almost to the point of dread of rereading some of the early plays, especially the Henry VI trilogy that I found tedious as a young man. My complete Shakespeare was edited by Hardin Craig copyrighted in 1951. I may try to purchase the Arden Shakespeare on your recommendation. I do have sixteen copies of individual plays, mostly tragedies and late comedies. But they, too, have early copyright dates for the most part.

Mollie

Several years ago I had some medical issues to attend to. Believing anyone else's drama would be better than my own, I started reading Shakespeare's plays. Not in any particular order and I only read about 18 of them. I read the play if I could find a visual version to watch after reading . I have, from time to time, yelled "a pound of flesh" when I have been cut off by another driver or when something seems unfair or wrong. But what stuck me most of all were stage directions..."Exit, pursued by a bear". How true this is. I no longer make New Year's Resolutions instead I determine what the new year's bear will be. This year's bear is the Book Club Hardcore Literature. I still have other bears lurking around...but thank goodness bears are solitary animals.

Cindy Hayes
>>99204665

I must say I enjoyed the ones I saw on stage much more than the ones I read. I never thought I would be attempting to read through all his works, especially in one year. This book club has made me flex my reading muscles.

hardcoreliterature
>>99200653

I’m so moved at how quickly and deeply you have fallen in love with Shakespeare, Susan. I think you are really going to get so much enjoyment out of this project. I can’t wait to hear your thoughts! It must be very exciting waiting for your Arden Complete Works to arrive :)

hardcoreliterature
>>99201320

I’m so happy you’re looking forward to the project, Nephele. Your background gives you a really strong grounding for this chronological reading. And that’s such a great question! The Tempest is like Shakespeare’s “farewell” piece, his goodbye to the world of theatre. It’s his last work all his own, and such a powerful one to end on. But it seemed he couldn’t fully leave the theatrical world (or the theatrical world couldn’t let him depart that easily), and so we see those final plays are his collaborations with John Fletcher. For my thoughts on chronology, I’ve aimed for composition as opposed to first performance or publication :)

Cindy Hayes
>>99244579

“A pound of flesh”! That is hilarious. I may have to try that next time I get cut off.

Rebekah Sunday

My current relationship with Shakespeare— it’s like a new relationship where you’re starting to fall in love, but don’t know the person inside out yet. I loved the initial getting-to-know-you process last year. I’m excited to fall madly in love this year!! I have read all of Jane Austen’s novels, and am working on reading all of Emerson and Thoreau. I’ve read almost all of Dostoevsky and cannot wait to re-read The Brothers Karamazov. That’s a work of A+ literature. Other works of A+ literature, for me, are Middlemarch (I can’t shut up about it!!), A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin (a delicious collection of short stories — HIGHLY recommend, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, and East of Eden by John Steinbeck.

David Brown

Here's where I want to be with Shakespeare: to dance in my mind, heart and soul with the symphony of Shakespeare this year. Play on. Yet I'm not there yet.....My level of appreciation is definitely deeper, yet even after six months I feel like I am still "breaking in". I'm excited about the project and look forward to experiencing the plays with audio, visual, video (YouTube) and Ben's videos. I recently enjoyed Peter Ackroyd's biography of Shakespeare. I've read all of Cormac McCarthy with some re-reads, all as audiobooks. George Eliot is another author focus but so far it has not been chronological. My A+ list includes: classics: Odyssey, Moby Dick, Ulysses, Anna Karenina, Lord of the Rings, Blood Meridian, Don Quixote, MIddlemarch, Jane Eyre, -(off the top of my head....have not applied any ranking system yet). "Dancing is not just getting up painlessly, like a leaf blown on the wind; dancing is when you tear your heart out and rise out of your body to hang suspended between the worlds." - Rumi

Constance Stanton

Thank you, Ben. Looking forward to this project! My previous relationship with Shakespeare: High school….traumatic; forced against my will to read Viola’s part out loud to my English class; uninspired teaching. Later, and a very long time ago, I had a beautiful edition of the complete works (since lost in a house fire), which I read through but not deeply. But I love movies and music and have used those to bring me back to reading most of the “great” plays. Current favorites: Tempest (re-read last month as a new member of the HLBC), Dream, Hamlet, Macbeth. I admit to being a huge fan of sci-if and children’s literature which have been the main focus of my reading, but my favorites among classics are Austen (read all….hate the character of Emma, though), Dickens (read all), Jane Eyre, Iliad and Odyssey (thanks to great audiobooks), Hemingway’s short stories, Vonnegut. The recent issue of The Passenger has got me reading Cormac McCarthy, whom I’ve never read before. Love his writing style and also his interest math and science (which I share). So I’m going to read all of his works. Also reading KJV of Bible, especially Job, Isaiah, Psalms. I agree with Ben that this is a good fit with McCarthy….probably with Shakespeare, too.

Kyle Smith

That was a beautiful story about your grandmother, Ben. My grandparents were also from Ireland.—I know I said I probably wouldn’t have the time to do the Shakespeare part of the group but I’ve been watching the BBC’s 1983 production of A Comedy of Errors on BritBox during my time on the elliptical and it’s hilarious! (Is that Roger Daltry as Dromio? If it’s not, then it’s his doppelgänger, which is in itself Shakespearean!) I’ve been reading summaries so I can keep up but even the summaries get my head spinning. After my first online primer, I thought id be in for a death march, but it’s also whimsical and delightful and I figure the things I don’t understand I can look up later. Also. pro-tip: Have you ever seen “Slings & Arrows”? It’s a hilarious TV series about everything that can and does go wrong when a Canadian theater festival mounts its production of “Hamlet.” Season 2 is MacBeth and Season 3 is Lear. You’ll have to sow yourself up after each episode. Cheers!

Hazel Sun

I have read a few of Shakespeare’s plays in high school like many others. At that point I still barely spoke English so there was lots I missed. But I still remember parts of the soliloquies I memorized. The I read twelfth night, winters tale, and tempest with this book club. I can’t say I am able to fully appreciate them yet. My personal canon 🤔 it’s not much yet, Shakespeare’s Sonnets, TS Eliot’s The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock and the poetry of Emily Dickinson ☺️

hardcoreliterature
>>99205467

I’m so glad you’re on board, Brian! It sounds to me like you’re primed to develop a very deep love of Shakespeare. King Lear is such a special work for me. Although I read works like Romeo and Juliet and As You Like It when I was young, it was coming to King Lear as a teenager that essentially impressed me with what great stories could do. I reread this one every year and it seems deeper every time!

hardcoreliterature
>>99205737

Your father’s copy of the Complete Works with Ellen Terry’s picture is such a treasure, June. For single volumes, I’ve found the Arden paperbacks are really wonderful editions to collect - the print size is a fair bit larger than many other editions of Shakespeare too! :)

hardcoreliterature
>>99206163

Your story is so beautiful, Margaret. We have so many similarities in our relationships with Shakespeare! Thank goodness for wise grandmothers who share their love of great literature with us! I can’t wait to journey through these plays with you :)

hardcoreliterature
>>99208148

Much Ado is marvellous! I came to it at the same time as King Lear and was smitten. I think I’ve got most of it to memory by now :) I’m looking forward to reading them all with you, Sharon!

Cath schofield

I’ve seen Coriolanus, Twelfth Night, Henry IVpt1, Winters Tale, The Tempest, King Lear on the stage. I know Othello, Midsummer Night’s dream and Macbeth mainly thanks to Verdi, Mendelssohn and Shostakovich. Henry V and Romeo and Juliet I know through great films. I am particularly looking forward to reading the plays I know absolutely nothing about. I’ve never read the entire works of one author. Would love to read all of Dickens or Hardy. A+ novels for me are Great Expectations, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Wuthering Heights, Anna Karenina, God of small things, Never let me Go

Caroline P
>>99249656

Hello Hazel, you reminded me about The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock.. I must go and read that again tonight. What a treat.

hardcoreliterature
>>99208646

Antony and Cleopatra and King Lear are such powerful favourites to have, Mick. I’m in awe of the fact that he was able to write these masterpieces so close together. I love your favourites - Joan Didion, Henry James, Susan Sontag! Very nice. On my last bookstore trip, I treated myself to a Didion haul. Superb stuff!

Jane Lange

I read four Shakespeare plays in high school, but that was so long ago I don’t remember much about them. I joined the book club at the end of the year and managed to deep read some sonnets, A Winter’s Tale, and King Lear. I adored both the sonnets and King Lear. What do I plan to get out of the Shakespeare project? I haven’t clearly articulated an answer to that…pleasure, insights, profundity. But I’m sure that as I read, I’ll figure it out. Looking forward to the project!

Scott W

Thanks, Ben. Very excited about this! I'd only read Shakespeare at school before last year. I was about 15 and we studied Much Ado About Nothing. I re-read it recently for the first time since then, and I still don't like it. It gets an F at this point. (edit: to be clear, I think I'm associating the boring lessons with it. I plan to see it live this year to help me unlock it before re-reading.) But the other eleven plays I read with the club last year all fared much better. My appreciation and enjoyment reading Shakespeare has really grown over the last twelve months. I've been reading the sonnets and narrative poems over Christmas, and am seeing The Tempest and Hamlet at the theatre in the next couple of weeks. I have the Arden 3rd Ed. Complete Works ready for this project, and I'll happily get some more Everyman or single Arden copies of my favourite plays as we go along. I'm starting to read criticism by Knight and Bradley, which has taken me to Tolstoy's 'What is Art' to read his attack. I've started writing my own 'personal essays', just opinion pieces, on what I think of something Knight says, or Tolstoy, and so on. Every evening now, once I've gone up to bed, I read Shakespeare or related literature for around an hour before switching the light off. It's my time every day to read him without needing to worry about what I should be picking up and reading. If I've gone up to bed.. it's Shakespeare. I've never read all of an author's work before. I'm tempted by Cormac McCarthy, Herman Melville, James Joyce, Emily Bronte (Gondal work and a few poems remaining..), Philip Roth.. I will definitely do this at some point the future, but this year, around everything else I want to read, I've only got room for the whole of Shakespeare. I have a few A's in my personal canon, but A+'s are very rare; only Macbeth, Moby Dick and Ulysses score that high so far. (Though I have prickly hairs on my neck about War and Peace.. so watch this space!)

Leah

Wow. Thanks so much for sharing your story. The feelings of depression and being disconnected from others really resonated. That experience was also a long time ago for me and its so wonderful to look back and see how incredibly important and transformational that time is for a person rather than judging myself harshly for being depressed even though I had a fortunate life. We are just growing. I wasn't planning on doing the Shakespeare project out of intimidation since I have never read a full Shakespeare play and have found the language to be challenging. I thought I would just read a few plays this year. But I just bought a copy of Comedy of Errors on my lunch break today. I feel really pulled to participate in the chronological project - it feels right.

Jen Kaczmarek

Thanks Ben so much for creating a list! I had attempted one on my own and was so relieved when you said you were cultivating one for us! My exposure to Shakespeare has been limited to university and various festivals. I struggle with comprehension and am taking the year to read the plays and allow the words to wash over me, hoping I retain what’s pertinent. I did enjoy acts 1 & 2 this morning and found myself laughing. What a great start to the day! Happy reading all!

Suzanne Stegic

What a stroke of luck to have found you in my YouTube feed. As a Uni student studying Graphic Design and Philosophy, I took intro to Shakespeare to improve my mind. It was 1984, no videos or audio books, I discovered the music library and checked the plays out on vinyl, along with an enormous set of headphones, and listened on the university turntables, flipping the records every so often. Fell in love with Shakespeare. Fond memories of battling the Minnesota winters to ‘Will Steger’ myself through the snow to get to the old dusty library filled with music majors, a fireplace, wood paneled walls and chesterfield sofas and dusty tomes. If I could study at Oxford, it was a lovely substitute. Found my ‘Complete Works of Shakespeare’ on the shelf Saturday, dusted it off, and 38 years later, opened it to read the sonnets. This book club is fabulous. 🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻

John de Vignolles

1) I've been reading and watching Shakespeare all my life. My first live play was A Midsummer Night's Dream, then Twelfth Night with my school when I was 14 or 15. I've seen Bernard Hill and Julie Walters as Macbeth and Lady Macbeth at Leicester Haymarket, I've seen Charles Dance as Coriolanus at Barbican Theatre, Miles Anderson and Amanda Root as Macbeth and Lady Macbeth at Barbican Theatre. I've seen Pericles with Rudolph Walker, I've seen loads of his plays live in London, Bradford, and Stratford inter alia. I've watched, time and time again, filmed versions, including Ken Branagh's Hamlet, and Henry V, but as a lad, Richard III, Henry V, and Hamlet by Larry Olivier were what I saw on TV. I've been a lifelong fan of Shakespeare's. 2) I've probably read half of his plays, not the complete works. Taming of the Shrew holds a special place for me since it was the first play I studied seriously as part of my BA in History which I did as a hobby whilst working. 3) Special author? At the moment, I am on my personal Maud Montgomery project. So much so, I am considering selling up everything and moving to PEI. 4) What are some examples of A+ works of literature in your personal canon? "Marianne Dreams" by Catherine Storr, one of my most re-read books despite its being a "children's" book "Anne of Green Gables" by Maud Montgomery. I defy anybody to not fall in love with Anne Shirley. "To Kill A Mockingbird" by Harper Lee, as a lad, I loved Scout and Mary Badham. "Demian" and "Narcissus and Goldmund" by Hermann Hesse. My favourite one of these two is whichever one I read most recently. "The Genealogy of Morality", "Twilight of the Idols", and "The Anti-Christ(ian)" by Nietzsche. "The World of Null-A", "The Pawns of Null-A" by A.E. van Vogt (my best buddy says I used to have "A.E van Vogt is God" on my rucksack at school!) "Foucault's Pendulum" by Umberto Eco. Anything by Ray Bradbury. Anything and Everything by Alexandre Dumas. "The Lion, the Witch, and The Wardrobe" by C.S. Lewis. I loved Lucy and identified with Edmund. I still (at 61) check the back of the wardrobes in hotels, B&Bs where I stay. So far, I've never got into Narnia. :( "Ivanhoe" and "The Talisman" by Sir Walter Scout. "The Odyssey" by 'Homer' P.S. This is probably heresy, but I've never liked King Lear! P.P.S. Richard II in Hollow Crown is, IMHO, absolutely stunning.

Katherine

I studied Shakespeare at school like many people. We would study a play per year for English class and perform a play for drama class (I played Lady Macbeth, but strangely, I’m still waiting on my Oscar award). I’ve been lucky enough to have seen a few of his plays performed and adored experiencing Romeo and Juliet at the Globe. Recently I have not read many of his plays, not because I don’t have the interest, it’s most that I love the work so much that I am worried to read a play and not have the ‘first time reading it’ experience ever again (does anyone else do this with works?). But I am committed to this project and look forward to reading many of the masterpieces that I have been procrastinating over for years. My A+ works are ‘East of Eden’ by Steinbeck (I did not think that I would enjoy this work before reading it but I was blown away) and ‘Wuthering Heights’.

John de Vignolles
>>99213160

"1) What is your current relationship with Shakespeare? Undying hero worship? " I literally laughed out loudly at this!! (not in a bad way!) :D

Irene
>>99259153

I also love Ray Bradbury! And I have to respond to your heresy - I once played Cordelia/Fool in King Lear. lol I wasn’t any good, mind you, but for that reason the play has a place in my heart!

John de Vignolles
>>99223771

My and my brothers' parents never went to Uni, it did not happen in the 1950s. I and my brothers went to uni. We still, 40+ years after graduation, get looked down on by some because we have Yorkshire accents. But hey ho. It does not bother us any more, if ever.

Sharon

I'm a bit fearful of this endeavor, made more challenging for me because the individual Arden Shakespeare books I've purchased to date are all in the Third Period! So rather than spend a large bundle purchasing every early single volume I know I'll never read again, I made a quick pivot and purchased the single-volume Arden Shakespeare Complete Works edition (although Norton almost won out). I know that I will miss the textural notes, but I'm hoping that Ben's discussions and my one-year membership to LitCharts will help decipher what I didn't comprehend. I mentioned in earlier posts that I've decided to read Dickens chronologically as my special author focus. However, my bigger plan is to read every book in the 2023 schedule (I've already purchased most of them) because this is my first full year with the book club. If I begin to struggle too much with Shakespeare and/or fall behind with Dickens, I will drop them in favor of our scheduled books and pick up when I can. It's all good, though...I love having options! UPDATE: In case any members are still undecided as to which edition to purchase: I scrapped the Arden Shakespeare Complete Works edition, particularly because they omitted textural notes, in favor of 4 of the 5 used Norton Shakespeare [3rd ed.] paperbacks (I already own the sonnets) after reading reviews by readers of these editions: "Very thorough introductions to each piece or group of pieces (e.g. the sonnets)...the footnotes are at the bottom of the page and mark the text with the same number....useful alternative words are given in the margins to clarify archaic words...the succinct, useful footnotes and comments clarify difficult phrases and idioms...appealing font and layout...the notes are not distracting both visually and in terms of their complexity...notes take up very little page space, thereby avoiding unseemly pages that are half footnotes, half text." The books are being shipped so I can't physically inspect them but so many readers gave similar reviews that I went for it. Beyond high school Shakespeare, I have only read one play to date...Hamlet. Its long length and Elizabethan English were so challenging for me that the Norton edition feels like the right fit. Perhaps other members might also benefit from this edition. UPDATE #2: I received the Norton Shakespeare Tragedies paperback edition and it is fabulous! A digital version was included. The reviews above are spot on. I wish I had only purchased this Norton series because it is perfect for my needs, plus the book is floppy so it lays flat. I'm very pleased with it.

John de Vignolles
>>99264271

Buy the Penguin or Oxford World Classics versions then, don't feel you need to get the Arden. Only 10% of mine are Arden. In fact, I tend to prefer the Penguin ones.

Devon

Ben, your love of Shakespeare is always infectious! This made me very excited to seriously dive into the Bard. My only experience with Shakespeare was in high school and I didn’t particularly love or hate his works. I suppose that is why I haven’t read any since that time. In a way, I feel this is an advantage because I can come into the project as a practically blank slate (other than the pervasive things that cannot be avoided in our culture that stem from Shakespeare of course). As I am just beginning, I plan to go through the back catalogue reading and lectures first before beginning the chronological project to get a good foundation in Shakespeare but I know your continued enthusiasm will keep me interested the whole way through!

Waco Glennon

Hello all! I am sorry if this is a repeat question. I looked through the posts but didn’t see my specific question. Ben mentioned the Arden editions. In researching I see there are 4 different editions. Any thoughts on which to go with? Thank you Ben and everyone

Emma S.

I really enjoyed this lecture. My experience of studying English lit at uni was very similar (I was the first to go in my family too), and afterwards I ended up not wanting to even look at a book for a few years! I'm glad to say I've come full circle now. I've always enjoyed Shakespeare, and although I didn't meet him until school I enjoyed studying his plays. Maybe I got lucky with how it was taught, but I wasn't put off at all. Romeo and Juliet was my introduction, which is probably why I still love it so much. An A+ book for me is Wuthering Heights, I could reread it endlessly and get something different from it each time. Also Persuasion by Jane Austen and Tolstoy's Anna Karenina.

Giulia Franzoso

Well, what can one say?! This project is so well thought out, I am literally speechless. I am an obsessive reader of Shakespeare and I often organize group readings of Shakespeare here in NYC. And still, I have never read all of his works in this order. I cannot wait for this. I am sure that this approach will deepen and foster my love for the Bard; and I am sure that the fellow readers in this club will make the experience even more remarkable. So, fellow readers, “let’s go hand in hand, not one before another.” :)

Brandon Sampson

Didn’t read much of the bard in college. I’ve always wanted to read though his collected works. I am very excited for this project. Thank you for all your hard work!

Lindsey Smith

I haven't read much Shakespeare since high school. I saw a production of the Merry Wives of Windsor recently which was fun. Shakespeare intimidates me...but I read about 20 pages of The Comedy of Errors so far and it's great and easier to read than I thought. Now, I'm excited to start this series! I think I've read almost all of Thomas Hardy's and Dostoyevsky's works.

Bethany Thompson

I love that you mentioned your blue collar family - my dad is a blue collar engineer, who knows Beethoven’s 9th symphony by heart and collects first edition Steinbecks. He seems to know everything about history / philosophy/ theology. Yet - his hands are always dirty from working outside. It just goes to show that literature & art are for everyone. I’m not sure I can commit to reading *all* of Shakespeares works this year, but I’m definitely ready to read all of his poetry and at least a few plays! Big thanks to Ben for putting these lectures together!

Jenny

I have only read a little bit of Shakespeare starting with The Merchant of Venice in school. I found my grandmas copy of the Complete works of William Shakespeare and started reading them while working part time for my dad in the school holidays but didn’t get very far. I’ve had it in mind to read the complete works since my son went to school but have found the prospect too daunting. However I picked up s copy of the complete works last year with the intention of reading it while recovering from my hip replacement. I’m so pleased to be doing a chronological reading with the HLBc though and will be very pleased with myself if I complete it. I have read lots of popular fiction over the years and have read neatly all of Agatha Christie, Dick Frances, Stephen King, Catherine Cookson, L J Ross, Sherlock Holmes, Jane Austin and about 60 Beast Quest books with my son. There are lots of authors I would like to delve into this year but my focus will be on reading everything in this years HLBC programme. My A+ Works are Pride and Prejudice, Lord of the Rings, Les Misrable, Middlemarch and Day of the Triffids. I’m sure WAP will be added soon as I’m loving the book and getting so much more out of it thanks to the accompanying lectures which are greatly appreciated.

Vicky Radcliffe

Thank you Ben and this community for another fascinating window into great literature. I am excited to embark on this journey through all of Shakespeare with you. 1) What is your current relationship with Shakespeare? I love seeing Shakespeare performed - especially live - and see at least 2 or 3 plays a year, both amateur and professional. The last I saw was Much Ado About Nothing but my favourites are Twelfth Night and Hamlet. I have never read the plays so this is an exciting new opportunity for me. 2) Have you read a writer's entire works before? If so, how did you find the experience? I have read all of D.H. Lawrence's works including his poetry but I realise now I read them to tick them off a list rather than to enjoy them. This is the danger for me of trying to read everything someone has written because I love lists and ticking things off. I will use this Shakespeare project to try and be mindful of this tendency and curb the completionist streak in myself. 4) What are some examples of A+ works of literature in your personal canon? Midnight's Children (Salman Rushdie) Little, Big (John Crowley) Bleak House (Charles Dickens) Earthsea series (Ursula K. Le Guin) - but pretty much anything she ever wrote. Love in the Time of Cholera (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)

Travis Slater

great lecture, really looking forward to the chance to connect in similar ways to works I otherwise would not have tackled. I doubt I will knock out all of these, but there are so many that I've wanted a reason to pick up-- twelfth night, much ado about nothing, a midsummer night's dream, Merry wives of Windsor, measure for measure, for example. I started my chronological reading of William Faulkner last month with "soldiers' pay" and am currently working though "Mosquitos". Faulkner has quite a publishing story, so I'm excited to go through, learn about his life, and unlock even deeper appreciation of his great works, as "As I Lay Dying", "The Sound and the Fury", and "Light in August" are works I've devoured and then re-read immediately after. I'll echo some others in this thread and say I'd also like to do Cormac McCarthys works in order. There's a great interview with the Coen brothers when promoting "No Country for Old Men" where they laud Cormac's early works and claim that he knew exactly who he was from his first publication. I have huge respect for that kind of writer, and unfortunately I cannot say the same about Faulkner. 5 A+ books (thanks for this prompt) Hamlet by William Shakespeare East of Eden by John Steinbeck V. by Thomas Pynchon The Road by Cormac Mccarthy Ulysses by James Joyce

Tiffany Farfan

Like many my relationship with Shakespeare was limited to high school. Although I had three teachers obsessed with Shakespeare so I think I got a more in-depth look than the average high schooler. For English class, Romeo and Juliet and Othello were required reading and Othello is one of my fondest experiences in class. My teacher made us debate if Iago or Othello was at fault and it was one of the most heated debates in class I've ever witnessed. My other teacher though was obsessed with Shakespeare's sonnets and we heavily analyzed several of them. His sonnets are wonderful but his plays are personally much more enjoyable to me, During my theater class we acted out a lot of Shakespeare's plays but it was usually just parts of the story but me not being able to handle that read more of the story and read Twelfth Night, Richard III, Henry VI Parts 1-3, and Anthony and Cleopatra. I really liked his work and on my own, I started reading through his plays. I remember loving Julius Ceasar and liking Macbeth but I really struggled with a Midsummer's Night Dream. I got frustrated and said I was done with Shakespeare and didn't pick up another of his works. I don't regret that as I think I enjoyed it but I don't believe I retained much from the plays because it was honestly beyond my reading level and I wasn't deriving much meaning from the works. I personally believe Shakespeare is one of those writers you need to discuss with others and see acted out. The first play production I ever saw was Shakespeare. My theater teacher said an all-male cast, like in Shakespeare's time had a production of Romeo and Juliet at our local theater and it was one of my favorite experiences ever. I was the only 16-year-old in the audience that day and I remember feeling special like I knew something the other kids didn't. I hope that being older now and my reading level much more advanced I can properly enjoy Shakespeare. I am working on the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay (the first woman to win the Pulitzer) and I am approaching it chronologically as well but she doesn't have as many works as Shakespeare so I plan on going in-depth as well. I hope to be able to find her short stories published in magazines and newspapers as well because I am so intrigued by her feminist thinking, uncommon for the times. In my personal canon would be In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (my favorite book ever; I read it once a year and sparked my interest in Criminology which I would later major in), Twelve Angry Men by Reginald Rose, Jane Eyre, the Hobbit, and Father and Sons by Ivan Turgenev.

Emily S

During high school, I read Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Hamlet, and a handful of sonnets. In drama classes we had a performance of Macbeth and worked with a few monologues from other Shakespeare plays. Since then I have only read Othello so I am looking forward to diving into this project! I have not read a writer’s entire works before but I think it will be an interesting experience. Some A+ works of literature for me are Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Anna Karenina, The Things They Carried, and The Goldfinch.

christina bordieri

I must say I didn’t have any intentions of participating in the Shakespeare portion of the HCBC this year. As newcomer I didn’t want to overwhelm myself but this lecture has changed my mind! I may not read them all but at least strive to read 2 per quarter. I have never considered watching a play and reading at the same time it has changed my perspective on making it feel a bit less daunting, and more dramatic, playful,fun experience. I have not read Shakespeare since high school: Much ado about nothing, R&J, Hamlet, and Macbeth. Thank you for the inspo Arden complete works is on its way (used copy for $11 total score)

Justin Ordoñez

My history with Shakespeare is this. It's winter 2001, has to be because I graduated in 2000 and I'm maybe a month away from getting kicked out of my parents house but still linger around post-high-school graduation with no real plan. I'm living in Michigan at the time. I'm bumming around doing nothing whatsoever when my girlfriend (high-school sweetheart, big to-do, total goddess, my reason for living) calls me during the school day--she's one year my junior--in tears and distraught. Apparently some fat oaf with an anger management problem and enough income to afford 4WD went ape shit on her in traffic because her tiny early-90s Dodge Shadow deathtrap was spinning its wheels after a snowstorm had befallen us suddenly and without warning (without warning because things could still do that in 2001). She had frozen up in the middle of the road, and I heard a symphony of horns behind her. "What do I do?" she asks into her cellular. I know my gf. She doesn't ask for help because she wants encouragement. She comes to me as a last resort. Yes, it's a "save me" moment--the kind some women seem embarrassed about--but I'm sure not to rub it in her. I ask where she is and she says she's at the local mall. I tell her to park there and wait for me to come get her--and try to assure her that when Detroit engineers a car with the weight of a snow cone and then gives it front wheel drive that it's inevitable. Pretty soon the only warmth you'll feel is your tires burning against the pavement after you've melted all the snow spinning relentlessly but you're still not going anywhere for some reason and that betrayal of the laws of physics will push you so close to the edge of suicide it's difficult to communicate it and keep this post upbeat. Keep in mind, I have no idea if my car will actually make it out to where she is, a mall between her school and some extracurricular activity she's doing, but her family is against our relationship and we only see each other once a week and I figure if we get trapped in the mall parking lot together someway, somehow, teenagers that we are, this is going to become about sex. I mean to say, the worst case scenario is not exactly the worst case scenario and we can explain to all the adults, "We had to get a hotel room and stay together--BECAUSE SNOW." Of course, I make it out there, and we do our customary cuddling, and she says some variation of, "Why are old men always yelling at me over everything that I do?" I tell her that tomorrow we'll buy some sandbags for her car and it'll drive better but we need to decide what's what--should I try to drive her home or to the school and someone else drives her home (or should we do nothing at all and see if it stops snowing?). Being the first-rate nerd that she is--the girl who demanded I read Catch-22 or she'd break up with me--she wants to go back to school for some reason, and I'm saying, "Yeah, but, I don't go to your school," and she says, "Okay, but, it's just one last class, and then you can drive me home." And I'm secretly thinking, "You're not imagining an evening where we are trapped and get a hotel room and bang all night, are you?" Said Goddess is actually quite giving but she doesn't like set-ups and I know not to freely display my ambitions. I swallow the disappointment and we begin the trek to her school. Now, before I go any further, you need to understand something about me. I have a bit of Benjamin Button syndrome. By which I mean, I was born looking like an old man and seem to become younger the older I get. When I was fourteen, people thought I was forty, and now that I'm forty, people think I'm twenty-five. I guess I just have an ageless face that looked old when I was young and now looks young that I'm old. Fast forward to summiting the monstrous snowfall and I'm in her school and I'm so uncomfortable being in an high school again. I've met a lot of her friends but not all and so she begins introducing me and her friend drags her aside and I'm later told quizzed, "How old is he?" My gf says, "He's eighteen." Her friend looks me up and down and says, "Have you checked his ID?" This keeps happening as she introduces me around. I'm like maybe 300 days older than these kids but they're treating me like I'm grandpa or something, including her English teacher--her last class--who looks at me, like, "Just so you know, I'm a mandatory reporter if I suspect abuse." She says, "My car was trapped and my boyfriend picked me up. Can he sit in class and then he's going to drive me home?" The English teacher agrees. Why? BECAUSE SNOW. I find a seat in one of the desk-chairs in her English classroom, which I struggle to fit in, I'm a gigantic human being, and I can sense everyone in the room thinking, "WTF, the girl who I thought I had a chance with is dating someone older than my Dad." I don't have time to address all this but that whole Catch-22 bit made an impression on me. I've been reading quite a lot with my free time, and I want something to pass the time. I pull off a copy of the complete works of Shakespeare from the bookshelf feeling this is something my high school should've introduced to me but didn't because, idk, we had to read something forgettable and written within the last twenty years or else modernity's fate hung in the balance. I sat there ignoring the class and the half-dozen girls who were instantly interested in me simply because they knew I had a girlfriend and wanted to see if they could momentarily break my loyalty with eye glances--not that I reserve that trait for the xx-chromosome but most of us are straight, after all, so statistics and probability being what they are, that was just my experience of it, plenty of women could tell the story the other way around, I imagine--and I'm devoted to these works of Shakespeare. I remember I didn't like the first ten or fifteen minutes. It was a real drag. But then I read something that made me laugh. And another little statement that make me laugh. I decided to read it again and noticed it had a certain flow that I could not yet identity as iambic pentameter. I start to think, "Wow, this is really genius," but I'm a jealous and insecure youngster, and when I read writing I think is better than mine, I cut it off, fearful it will invade and weaken me. The class period ends. I leave the class convinced Shakespeare is prolific but too paranoid to ever touch it again. Everyone else is convinced I'm a child molester so I say very loudly a statement that essentially says, "I graduated high school like seven months ago and you're all graduating in four months and half of you are already eighteen too--lay off." I leave and I see the snow is much, much worse and in all likelihood I'm going to get my gf home, get halfway to my house, have to abandon ship at the mall, and stay at a hotel room by myself while we talk on the phone and she says unironically, "Hey, what if we were there together?" Full story, I do get her home. I get myself home by the grace of God. We come back to the mall we abandoned her car at and the snow plows have plowed all around it and completely buried it in snow. I dig it out with my bare hands because I'm a real man who didn't bring gloves and then I push it while she tries to reverse out of this mess and every time she misses the car relaxes back into its nestled spot a millimeter from cracking my kneecaps into a million pieces. She gets out, sandbags already in her trunk, and she drives around a bit, and then stops and says, "Baby, I love you. You're the best." I get a quick kiss, and she drives off into the distance. Never read Shakespeare again, not seriously anyway. I'm into the challenge but may not read all of the plays. I'm not yet sure if I want to force myself through a work I'm not connecting with simply to suit an author's reputation when I could come to appreciation more naturally. I'm definitely excited, though. No snowstorms this time pls.

Elizabeth Madden

I have studied numerous works by Shakespeare in the course of my career as a teacher of both Eng. Lit. and Theatre Studies to both school and mature students over a period of forty years, but have never read all of Shakespeare's plays, far less studied them in depth, so I will find it interesting to see how Sh.'s skills as a dramatist developed over his own career. I also enjoy researching Sh.'s life and the historical climate and influences. Will you be providing any links to resources to help one do this, please, Benjamin?

hardcoreliterature
>>99210342

The KJV really is incredibly beautiful. It’s my choice for my Bible readings at the moment. I also have a beautiful Geneva that I adore too. And Richard Burton really has one of the most perfect voices for Shakespeare - and Donne and Dylan Thomas and the phone book :) Thank you so much for sharing your story, Shelley. The Tempest is such a profound one to have as your favourite! I’m completely with you on Titus and the Henry VI plays not being my favourites - although I’ve softened towards them thanks to knowing what comes later down the line! I’m so happy you’re diving in with such gusto. Thank you so much for reading with us!

hardcoreliterature
>>99212192

I’m so happy you’re excited for this one, Sid! Nice one on finishing Hamlet and making your way through Macbeth. They’re incredible, aren’t they? Lines from both these plays pop into my mind practically every single day. I’m thrilled you’re coming back to the bard after he was forced on you in school. I think there are a lot of us who can really relate to that. A lot of schools do more damage to Shakespeare than good. I’m told the same thing happens in France with Hugo, and in Russia with Tolstoy! And I’m totally with you on Tolkien being an A+ (and the works of Beckett, Shelley, Hesse). I can’t wait to read LOTR with you. Like you, I always see something new there. It reflects the part of the journey I’m on so profoundly.

LongArm

Hi Ben. Thank you for working so hard. It’s really high quality content. I am really enjoying your lectures.

Tom Pearsall

1) What is your current relationship with Shakespeare? I have read most of his major works at some point and feel reasonably familiar with his writing style. At least I can say I am no longer intimidated by the antiquated verbiage. I tried to keep up with the Shakespeare lectures last year but only managed to read the first 4-5 plays before life/work became overwhelming, so I look forward to trying again this year. The more I read Shakespeare the more I enjoy him. 2) Have you read a writer's entire works before? If so, how did you find the experience? I have tried with Faulkner and McCarthy. I am only a few works short with McCarthy, mostly his screenplays. I find rereading the good stuff more fulfilling than plowing through the author’s deep cuts. If I manage to succeed with Shakespeare I may need to reassess this approach. 3) For readers working on a special author, who are you planning to read? Your answers will help our tailored discussion on this topic. At some point I hope to read all of David Foster Wallace and Thomas Pynchon. I have most of their works however they are dense and difficult and mostly collecting dust on my bookshelf. If I can conquer Shakespeare I will need to use the momentum for these two postmodern authors. 4) What are some examples of A+ works of literature in your personal canon? -Absalom, Absalom! - Faulkner -Suttree, The Road, Blood Meridian - McCarthy -Brothers Karamazov - Dostoevsky -Invisible Man - Ellison -The Great Gatsby - Fitzgerald -Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim - Conrad I have read all of these several times and don’t plan to stop rereading them.

Dallas Bentley

1) Relationship with Shakespeare: Read 7 plays in High School. Read 2 plays during the pandemic for fun. Just read Twelfth Night and loved it. Performed some drama in high schools so I could appreciate the staged performances. I have at admit, it can be hard to get past the mystique and the archaic language into just appreciation of his works. I just read Twelfth Night for the first time and I actually was looking forward to hearing how the story ended. I found the wordplay of of Viola and the Clown engaging. Sir Toby, Fabian, and Sir Andrew silly. It took me two acts to begin to forget that I was reading Shakespeare and appreciate it without it feeling like an effort. As the play wore on, I started to imagine it being performed on stage. Faces had shape. Costumes seemed real. 2) Have you read all of an author's works? No. I read most of Vonnegut's work in college and got to see him speak at tthe Student Union. I was hoping this book club would spark my interest in the Russians and Shakespeare. I have read a fair amount of Carson McCullers and Flannery O'Conner. I gravitate towards short stories more, so this is my chance to hit the biggies. 3) I'd like to focus on Wallace, Pynchon or McCarthy. A big, modern American author with some meat on their bones but not too easy. I have read Wallace's Oblivion and Pynchon's Lot 49 but that is all. 4) A+ Invisible Man Fat City Atonement Once I read 200 short stories and ranked them over the course of a year. That was a fun reading experiment. A little thought food for us.

Shelley Riden
>>99215614

Thank you so much for sharing! I've put that link on my MacBook reading list so I can visit it when I come to Richard II.

Karen Bird

One of the reasons that I didn't study English in College was because I didn't want to destroy my love of literature. Hence, I studied history, which I still read. I took a Shakespeare course in high school. I personally found that the more I read, the easier it became to read Shakespeare. I read Romeo and Juliet, As You Like it, Macbeth. I do have a couple of authors of which I have read all of their works. Harriet Doerr, who started writing at 70, wrote two short novels and some short stories before she died. She wrote mostly as fiction, on her experience as an American living in rural Mexico (her husband's family owned a silver mine in Mexico). It took me a couple of times reading her first book, to appreciate what a wonderful writer she was. Oh, I wished she had time to write more A couple of years ago now, I read all of Austen novels and all of the Bronte sibling novels, and ranked them. My favorites are Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion, Mansfield Park, Jane Eyre, Shirley and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Although, I haven't read all of Tolstoy, I have read most of his works. There are still a few short works that I need to read. I still say that War and Peace is my favorite work of all time. A+ works: War and Peace Great Expectations Bleak House Sense and Sensibility Stoner by John Williams The Professor's House by Willa Cather The Door by Magda Szabo Embers by Sandor Marai The Lord of the Rings Crime and Punishment Jane Eyre To Kill a Mockingbird

Shelley Riden
>>99226085

How I love that you named your daughter Miranda! I named my first dog Thisbe (from Midsummer Night's Dream). And, I feel with you the loss of your books and notes; how excruciating. I stored my books when I lived in the dorms at uni, and they were stolen. That was 45 years ago and it still hurts my heart to think of. They were friends. Enjoy Steinbeck. Grapes of Wrath is supposedly his masterpiece, but it's East of Eden that I return to over and over. It's one of my two favorite books in the world (the other being War and Peace - so of course I'm excited to read THAT this year!). Happy Reading.

Elizabeth Madden

I have read/studied many plays by Shakespeare already.I like looking at them both as Literary texts and as works for performance-I have a background in teaching Drama and Theatre Studies. I have tended to prefer the Tragedies and Problem Plays to the Comedies and as for the History plays-I found Richard 2, Richard 3, and Henry 5 very interesting indeed, but am less enamored of the other histories. I enjoy reading plays anyway, so this will not be a chore-though I will not necessarily have time to read every play, so I may sit out some of the comedies. I have read all of Joyce's works, including his poetry and play, and his critical and other writings-I am rather a Joyce obsessive. I would rank my top10 lit works as being: Ulysses, Dubliners and A Portrait of The Artist As A Young Man, As I lay Dying, Beloved, A Doll's House, The Cherry Orchard, Death Of A Salesman, The Wasteland, Brighton Rock.

Karen Mathews

1. Where are you with Shakespeare? I have read several plays in high school, college and in workshops over the years. I realize that I never “deep read” any of the plays. My goal all the time to slog through the language and say that I read it. I want to have the relationship with Shakespeare’s plays that I can achieve with a novel. Once again I will have to read those 4? Plays quickly, but I am going to try to read slowly enough to make a connection.

Karen Mathews

2.. Have you read all of an author’s works?

kristian

Super excited to read all of Shakespeare with the HLBC and you, Ben! I'm a relative newbie when it comes to the Bard--I've only ever read Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet in high school. At the time, I didn't think they were anything special--I didn't have the same appreciation for poetry back then that I do now--and I found the language difficult and roundabout. Why can't he just say things more clearly, I would always complain. But I'm older and (hopefully) wiser now. I've been trying to make poetry a bigger part of my life and I can't wait to spend an entire year reading the greatest poet of all time. :) For my special author focus, I've always wanted to read all of Dostoevsky chronologically, but I think I'll have to push that out one more year because of all the big tomes we're reading in 2023. It's great that we're reading The Brothers Karamazov though, that would really help me out! (Maybe we can read shorter works for next year, Ben? Please? :D) I've also started going through all of Sebald--I love his dream-like prose and digressions--but again, it'll have to wait. My A+ works of literature: To Kill a Mockingbird Les Misérables Anna Karenina One Hundred Years of Solitude

Shelley Riden
>>99235510

You can do it, Steven! I'm reading an Act a day, and I believe that will get me through all of the plays before the end of the year.

Stella

1. Relationship with Shakespeare: I've read some, taught some, but I have tended to stick with the familiar. 2. I've read all of Hardy's novels and those of García Márquez. I've read a fair bit of Toni Morrison. This is all years ago, mind you. 3. I will be working my way through an over enthusiastic poetry book subscription I had last year.

Caroline P
>>99323605

Hello Karen, I have read the twelve plays we tackled last year. I agree the language is not easy. Gradually I can see an improvement in my understanding of the language but I can’t read quickly. I hope you enjoy the slow reading.. I will be joining you in taking my time

Susan Knox
>>99328424

Stella, a poetry book subscription sounds so fun! Best wishes making your way through it. I hope you find several new favorites.

Susan Knox

Rel with Shakespeare: I have read a small handful. I love MacBeth and Hamlet. I also loved my introduction to King Lear last year and still find myself thinking about it. 2. I haven’t read all of any author. I am slowly savoring Ishiguro and EM Forster and think I will add Zadie Smith and Nora Ephron to that list. 3. My author focus is Virginia Woolf. I haven’t made it very far yet but I absolutely love A Room of One’s Own. It has stood the test of time for me. After I make it further through her works, I am interested in exploring the group of authors that she had close friendships with (including Forster). I am excited that we will be exploring a bit of Woolf in this space this year.

John de Vignolles
>>99333546

A friend's daughter and I were chatting at his hotel a year or two back. Not sure how we got onto it but the subject was favourite novels. Anyway, we agreed to read each other's favourite novel to be discussed next time we happened to be in the hotel beer garden at the same time. She has to read Demian by Hermann Hesse, and I have "White Teeth" sitting in my to-be-read pile. From the plot on the back cover, it does look interesting.

Joe

1.). My relationship with Shakespeare: I read Romeo and Juliet in High School (20 years ago) and had no appreciation for it at the time. Was honestly just happy to get through it. I read The Comedy of Errors this past Sunday evening and I loved it. Would rate it as a B or even a B+. While I wouldn't consider it "high art" or great poetry, it was extremely funny and enjoyable. 2.) I don't think I have read any writer's entire work. Cormac McCarthy would be the closest as I'm just missing his two latest novels. 4.) A+ examples for me: Blood Meridian Absalom, Absalom! The Sound and the Fury East of Eden The Grapes of Wrath The Moviegoer 1984

John de Vignolles
>>99282722

Day of the Triffids is brilliant! If you haven't seen the Dougray Scott and Eddie Izzard version made for TV, I can highly recommend it.

John de Vignolles

WooHoo! Amazon Man just delivered shiny new copies of The Comedy of Errors, and Two Gentlemen of Verona! :D

Lisa Tritico

Waiting on the Arden Comedy of Errors and Taming of the Shrew. War and Peace and Shakespeare at the SAME TIME. WHO AM I?! Ben McEvoy you are a Literary Beast toying with my head.🤔🤣

John de Vignolles
>>99223014

Macbeth is my favourite! And Midsummer Night's Dream was my first live play. It was down in London with my class when we were 14-ish. I can't remember which theatre it was but it was magic!

John de Vignolles
>>99344092

If you can get hold of the John Cleese, BBC version of Taming of the Shrew, then I can highly recommend it! It's absolutely brilliant! 10 Things I Hate About You is a really good teen-movie version of it too. :)

June.

Just found my Everyman copy of J.m.Synge Plays,poems and prose. Great way to bring back memories. I saw an Irish dance company,perform in a mixture of Irish dance and classical ballet, The Playboy of the Western World.Iread all of Synge and all the Sean O'Casey plays so long ago that I had forgotten. O'Casey wrote of the Irish troubles between the wars?Absolutely heart breaking. Powerful women,holding it all together while the men get into a fight-and die. Must read them again. It really is a tremendous experience to get hooked on a writer until you find yourself quoting bits of dialogue and grieving or celebrating with the characters who have become alive and real. The only Shakespeare that I still remember is Portia's "quality of mercy speech". A woman lawyer dressed as a man in order to be taken seriously. SOUND familiar?.

Susan Knox
>>99319577

I’m a Vonnegut fan as well! One of the highlights of my time at UPenn in the late 80s was seeing him speak. I just listened to a couple of hours of interviews with him on our library’s audiobook database the other evening.

hardcoreliterature
>>99258304

Thank you, Jen! Your aim of allowing the words to wash over you and see what you retain is a marvellous one. That’s the perfect approach to Shakespeare in my opinion! I’m so glad you’re enjoying his work already :)

John de Vignolles
>>99355304

And in Shakespeare's day, Portia would be played by a man, so you'd get a man pretending to be a woman pretending to be a man! Is it in All's Well That Ends Well where you have woman hiding out as a man, who at one point pretends to be a girl? So you have a man playing a woman, pretending to be a man who is acting as a woman? It must have been confusing! I think RSC or somebody recently did a version where all of the parts were played by men as in Shakespeare's day. Actually, I think it's "As You Like It" I'm thinking of?

Elizabeth Madden

I was very interested to hear the tutor's accounts of how he came to be a Sh. enthusiast and how, with greater maturity, his understanding and appreciation has grown. With this in mind, and with his account of how the over-testing of lit. at Oxford put him off lit. for a time, I wonder whether this implies that, in demanding that students in schools, often from a very young age, not only have to read Sh. but also be tested on what they have read actually means more people are put off the works, and lit in general, than would be if a less prescriptive approach was taken? As a former teacher myself I am very interested in this. I can also say that the older I have become the more intersted and engaged by Lit. I have got, too. So, is it possible to embark on the study of lit too young?

Elizabeth Madden

A point about performance-Ben states that originally the plays would have been spoken very rapidly-how did the audiences appreciate the great plays, in terms of their subtlety? Lots of people nowadays feel they get more out of reading the texts to fully appreciate them-how valid an approach is this to the plays.

enrica boarato

Like many of you I'm a bit scared about this project because although I've already read some of Shakespeare's masterpieces and re read my two favorites (Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet ), I still don't know if I can manage with reading the whole of Shakespeare's works... However, I'm going to give it a go and try👍 the comedy of errors is already on my desk side by side with War and Peace!

Tatiana
>>99381568

I imagine that Shakespeare's contemporaries were more in tune with the language used in the plays as for them it must have been close to everyday language. Also, perhaps, they had more capacity to grasp and retain spoken language. I assume that the literacy rate were not particularly high amongst the general population. Anyway, these are just assumptions based on my gut feelings. So, if someone knows differently please contribute!

Tatiana

Well done Enrica! I don't know if I can tackle this challenge right now. But the good thing about this book club is that we can return to things later. The lectures will be here to guide us.

Michael Dobos
>>99335541

I've started the latest McCarthy novel, The Passenger, and I have to admit I've been struggling with it. I love McCarthy, and especially when I was younger, I had a hard time getting through some of his books, and The Passenger is one of his more difficult works mainly because of all the references to quantum physics. In The Border Trilogy, I often struggled with all the Spanish dialog, just reading it with no idea of the meaning. Also, a lot of people sleep on George Orwell. We read him in high school and then forget about him. But 1984 and Animal Farm are some of the most important books of the 20th century.

Michael Dobos
>>99293250

Are you going to buy a Complete Works of Shakespeare? I got the edition that Benjamin mentions (Arden, I think?). I'm pretty excited to read all the plays. I'm going to do so much better at playing along with Jeopardy.

Michael Dobos
>>99282955

Have you read One Hundred Years of Solitude by Marquez? That's an A+ book most definitely.

hardcoreliterature
>>99214500

I’m so thrilled that you’re reading Shakespeare with us, Stephanie. I’m also incredibly excited to learn that you’re planning a deep read of Jane Austen. These are two incredibly complementary writers, so I think you’ll have so many rewards running them alongside each other :)

hardcoreliterature
>>99215961

Toni Morrison and Thomas Pynchon are such fantastic authors to read all of! And having Faulkner or Kafka to come is very exciting. I would struggle to pick one over the other. I love them both so intensely. And beautiful choices of A+ works, Gerard 👌

hardcoreliterature
>>99219387

I miss visiting the Globe too, Jane. It’s been far too long for me since I’ve been to the theatre! There’s nothing quite like the atmosphere inside the playhouse. I really can’t wait to read these plays with you. Your love comes through very strong! And how marvellous that you are focusing on the interwar years. That sounds like such a rich and fascinating area to dig into. You must keep me updated about how that goes!

hardcoreliterature
>>99221896

Playing Lady Macbeth! Magnificent :) One of the roles of a lifetime! I can’t wait to read these plays with you, Deb!

hardcoreliterature
>>99222227

Thank you, Ann! Macbeth and Othello are two of my favourites. Intoxicating, dark poetry in both of those great plays. I can’t wait to read them through with you :)

Ellen M

So excited to attempt this project with you Ben! Fists of all, your personal reading history as a child gave me hope. As a mom to 2 ( a teen and pre teen) this is the one ‘fail’ I cannot accept. It pains me so that I have not been able to instill a love of reading in my children, even after doing ‘all the right things’ as a parent. Your history gave me hope that my children will do an about face and that it’s not too late. Sigh. My history with Shakespeare began last year with our club and I didn’t get through all our plays but I’m working on it. I found that watching an adaptation first really helps, then audio as opposed to just sitting with the book. The language is getting easier now but initially I found it very challenging to read without visual assistance - these are plays after all so I no longer worry that I need the visual to help me along. My favorite author is Jane Austen and I have devoured all her works many times, (in chronological order as well) and have deep dived into countless biographies and books analyzing various themes in her work. I was in the habit of going through an authors list when I was younger and discovered an author that really resonated with me, so I tackled most of Dickens, all of Wharton, Hemingway. I went through my Richard Russo & Ann Patchett phases. (For lighter reads I love travel authors Peter Mayle & always read Frances Mayes) My favorite current author hands down is Elena Ferrante and I devoured her complete works when I discovered her. Cormac McCarthy is a newer favorite and I’m working on his books too. There are so many more to mention but my canon/ must take on a desert island list would be comprised of the classics : Austen, the Brontës, Dickens etc and those are the books I keep coming back to Ben, you e talked about him before and it’s a great story but I really adore the passage by Hesketh Pearson about the inexhaustibility of Shakespeare. He is for all moods, he is for all phases, he continually rises, he is inexhaustible. Perfect.

hardcoreliterature
>>99223874

Your nieces are so blessed to have you! That’s exactly what I would love to do if I have children myself and for any nephews and nieces I might have. Curated reading! It’s so magical to have a wiser loved one putting special books in your hands :)

M. C.

Ben I cannot believe that I am going to read through the works of Shakespeare - how exciting. I read some in high school and college, but like this project. Being in, I believe, my 3rd Phase - I cannot wait to see what lies ahead. All the best M.

Vicky

Very excited! Looking forward to it, my relationship with Shakespeare has changed beyond recognition since joining this group and I do now feel confident that I can manage with one read /listen to get the gist - not sure if I’ll grade him 😂 too much like being at work as a lecturer but I’ll certainly be noting my thoughts !

Kathleen Peterson

I think I will categorize myself as a first time reader. I’ve read one or two plays in high school a loooong time ago. I’ve seen modern film adaptations. So I think this will really be my first time. I’m going in with a positive attitude and honestly, I expect to fall in love.

RachelEvelyn L

I have, for as far as I remember, been intimidated to venture into Shakespeare (despite accumulating some of his works over the years in hopes that my courage will finally prevail), but I am thinking this club is probably one of the most encouraging and supportive places to start! Given other ambitious reading projects like W&P and such, I will probably follow a much slower pace for this one or select certain works to focus on. I was lucky enough to score Harold Bloom's The Invention of the Human for only $5 a couple of years ago, so I will definitely be leaning on that as a supplemental guide as I go along. Having been a product of the American educational system, I have encounter Shakespeare a few times throughout high school (Othello and Macbeth are coming to mind), but frankly never with much enthusiasm on my part. Most memorably, I was part of the play Much Ado About Nothing (though I only had 1 or 2 lines haha) during my senior year, as part of an elective Drama class. Despite that, I never felt motivated to explore more on my own, mostly due to the highly complicated language. Looking forward to hearing the plays unpacked and reading through everyone's commentaries with hopes that the magic of Shakespeare will one day become apparent to me! I don't believe I have read any one particular author in full (whether classic or contemporary), but at the moment I'm the closest with Jane Austen. Over the last couple of years I have been dabbling across countries and centuries and haven't made a concerted effort to read through anyone's entire body of work, but I definitely would like to do so down the road for writers that really speak to me. If I had to point out some A+ and special books I have had the pleasure of reading, I'd have to say, non-exhaustively......... Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier Barchester Towers - Anthony Trollope The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera Great Expectations - Charles Dickens Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte War and Peace (only halfway through at the moment but I become more convinced with each page it'll be a lifelong favorite) - Leo Tolstoy

Rashmi

I read a bit of Shakespeare -a few plays- here and there but not as much as I aspired to. I have now started reading chronologically! It’s difficult to mark favorite lines/passages because I keep finding sentences that resinate with me or strike me as beautifully expressed! I have read all of Jane Austen, I love Persuasion and Pride and Prejuduce. The Road is one of my all-time favorite books. I’m too scared to read the Blood Meridian since I find reading gore disturbing (although I work in an operating room, go figure!) I love Willa Cather, Emily Dickinson, Charles Dickens, Emerson, now Tolstoy, etc. Also silly and not exactly a high literary rank but I enjoy occasionally dipping into P.G.Wodehouse books. I am not well-read like many in this group and I feel a bit intimidated being here. Question: I have 5 audible credits. Any recommendations for books you all like to listen to over and over? I hate to spend my credits on single ‘listens;’ I use my library for those usually. Thanks in advance!!

Rashmi

Resonate*

Jonathon Glover
>>99445019

Hey Rashmi, I listened to my first Wodehouse this week in ‘My Man Jeeves’ and really enjoyed it. It seems a wonderful little diversion in between some of the rather serious texts that we are endeavouring to engage with this year. In regards to excellent audiobooks with replay value I have really enjoyed the mythology series by Stephen Fry (Mythos, Heroes and Troy), ‘Sherlock Holmes - The Definitive Edition’, also narrated by Stephen Fry, is outrageous value, had an absolute ball with ‘Project Hail Mary’ by Andy Weir (with an outstanding narration by Ray Porter) and loved the audiobook of ‘Gentleman in Moscow’ by Amor Towles. If you are looking for something a little more difficult then I also recommend ‘Half of a Yellow Sun’ by Adichie, ‘True Story of the Kelly Gang’ by Peter Carey and ‘The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay’ by Michael Chabon. Good luck with Shakespeare this year!

hardcoreliterature
>>99280193

I'm so happy you're enjoying it! And how marvellous that you've read almost all of Thomas Hardy and Dostoyevsky. I adore them both. I've been rereading Hardy continuously over and over again for years. He's very special to me. And, if you like Dostoyevsky, you're definitely going to get a lot out of Shakespeare :)

hardcoreliterature
>>99281840

Your father sounds like an inspirational man, Bethany! A blue collar engineer who knows Beethoven and collects first edition Steinbecks. That's the kind of man I want to have a beer with! :)

hardcoreliterature
>>99270681

Thank you, Emma! How amazing to hear that you were the first to go in your family too. It sounds like our backgrounds are very similar! And I adore your A+ books. I've just started my yearly reread of Wuthering Heights and it's blowing me away all over again.

hardcoreliterature
>>99274807

Thank you so much, Giulia :) I love that you organise group readings of Shakespeare! I can't wait to read these great plays with a fellow obsessive reader of the bard :)

hardcoreliterature
>>99266817

Thank you, Devon! :) I agree with you that you're coming in with an advantage as a 'blank slate'. I love that you're planning to go through the back catalogue before beginning the chronological read through. I'm so keen to know which play emerges as your favourite among them!

hardcoreliterature
>>99258766

Thank you, Suzanne :) I am grateful for the YouTube algorithm for bringing your wonderful self to read with us! Your personal story of falling in love with Shakespeare, listening to his plays on vinyl, is incredibly romantic. Thank you so much for experiencing these great works with us!

hardcoreliterature
>>99246136

Beautiful analogy, Rebekah :) I love that you've read all of Jane Austen, almost all of Dostoyevsky, and are now embarking on reading all of Emerson and Thoreau. I can see why you're finding yourself enamoured with Shakespeare. Your favourite writers were deeply touched by him too!

hardcoreliterature
>>99248595

Thank you, Constance. Your description of your high school experience with Shakespeare as 'traumatic' gave me a good giggle. I completely relate! Schools really need to do something about how they teach Shakespeare. Even I was traumatised! The KJV is very special to me too. Job, Isaiah, and the Psalms are my go-to books, along with the New Testament :)

hardcoreliterature
>>99249134

Thank you, Kyle. I really appreciate that. Your grandparents were from Ireland too! Grand stuff :) I've not seen “Slings & Arrows," but thank you so much for the recommendation. I will definitely check it out. Sounds right up my street!

Angela

I was introduced to Shakespeare in middle school I think , with Romeo and Juliet. It was not until high school that I understood that Shakespeare was best experienced by seeing the plays performed . I grew up in Louisville, Ky. , home of Actors Theater , and luckily they were performing A Midsummer Night’s Dream when I was in 10th grade , I think , so we read the play in English class and then went to see it performed which made all the difference . Later I had the pleasure of seeing Ving Rhames there in Othello , a play which I wouldn’t read until years later . For some reason I mostly saw and read his comedies while in my teens and twenties with the exception of Julius Caesar . We were also lucky in Louisville to have a Shakespeare in the Park program where I saw Taming of the Shrew and Two Gentlemen of Verona . Time passed and I saw little Shakespeare during college and medical school . I had never read Hamlet or Macbeth . Then I went to NYC to see Patrick Stewart in Macbeth and that made me keen to see more Shakespeare . A chance came to see Daniel Craig in Othello as Iago . This time , to prepare , I listened to a production on Audible and also read it at same time while listening . I also read a couple of articles about what it was about and what exactly was the deal with Iago ? Haha . I came to understand that to enjoy seeing a play of his , if one isn’t familiar with it , immersing oneself in it prior to going greatly enhances enjoyment ! I have also read most of the Hogarth’s Shakespeare reimaginings. I truly love them . I highly recommend reading the Macbeth by Jo Nesbø. It is reset as a gritty noir involving drug lords fighting for territory in Scandinavia . I have started Shakespeare in A Divided America by James Shapiro but haven’t really gotten into it yet. I also loved Station Eleven which has a central Shakespearean theme . Highly recommend . I went to the (new) Globe Theatre in London a few years ago and also Stratford -on-Avon and visited his school as Well as the church he is buried in which was quite neat to see. Best books for me - so many ! What come to mind are ones that left me w a big impression years later : As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner Man’s Search for Meaning - Victor Frankl Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert Heinlein All Flesh Is Grass - Clifford D. Simak Philip K. Dick’s short stories The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood as well as her MaddAddam trilogy Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies by Hillary Mantel Whew ! That will do it for now ! I watched the video and wonder if there is a timetable for the first few plays ? Or first grouping ?

Rashmi
>>99478527

Thanks for the recommendations. I was also wondering what the schedule is…

Rashmi
>>99385280

Agree about returning. I liked how BM called the discussion threads “evergreen.”

Angela
>>99323062

I would really love a Joyce tutorial as it were. I also chose As I Lay Dying , I have seen people in the past talk about how they absolutely hated it , I wonder if it must be the format/style that turns some people off?

Luke Harris

I’m an English teacher in a deprived secondary school and we teach Shakespeare all the way through y7-11. I’d say I’ve come to appreciate Shakespeare through teaching it. At school I was naturally good at Eng Lit and got an A in my A-Levels on Measure for Measure but I never really appreciated it. I was a much bigger fan of Tennessee Williams while completing that course. It’s only after I had to really get to know Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, King Lear and A Midsummer Night’s Dream that I have come to really enjoy the plays and discussing them with colleagues. Ultimately, I hope that completing this challenge will make me a better teacher to my students and more knowledgeable in general when it comes to Shakespeare. As for authors whose whole work I’ve explored, the list isn’t extensive. I have read all of Raymond Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe books and all of Ross Macdonald’s Lew Archer series. I have read the vast majority of Stephen King’s works as well. With King especially, you start to notice general trends and themes in his writing such as the overbearing mother or the writer hero. I’m sure I’ve read more complete works but none are coming to mind at the moment.

Amanthi Chandraratna

Unfortunately my experience with Shakespeare is very limited and I'm finding this undertaking quite daunting. I have a confession to make; in the past, I haven't enjoyed reading the plays, but have thoroughly enjoyed seeing them acted out. This is applicable to both Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde. I almost always enjoy the book more than the movie when it comes to novels, so I'm not sure why I have this experience when it comes to plays. I am firmly optimistic that with Ben as our guide, my experience this time around will be different. My first experience of Shakespeare was when I was 8 years old and my grandfather gave me an abridged collective works of Shakespeare which had plays like Romeo and Juliet, Merchant of Venice, Tempest and Midsummer Nights Dream. I thoroughly enjoyed the easy read at that age and you can only imagine how shocked I was when I couldn't quite get along with the unabridged plays when I was reading them for a college course. I have read Hamlet, A Winters Tale and King Lear which was the most memorable- probably because it was for a class themed Madness in Literature and my professor was phenomenal. My Everyman's volumes are arriving on Saturday and I am planning to give The Comedy of Errors a go this weekend. I am hoping all of us by year's end under Ben's great tutelage will learn to love and appreciate the great Shakespeare.

Tatiana

What an exciting endeavor! I have read all of Shakespeare over the years except for the histories. Then I took several Oxford online courses in medieval history and now I know I am ready to understand and appreciate them.

mariah schneider

My experience with Shakespeare is limited to having read the Merchant of Venice and Hamlet in school, along with with watching the Taming of the Shrew and a few others as adaptations. That being said, I am currently studying Medieval History and am trying to read works from the time periods as I move through them, so this project comes at a good time. I'm not going to sit down and read all of Shakespeare in one sitting so spreading out the plays is a good fit for me. I look forward to watching adaptations though, plays are meant to be heard and seen, not just read.

River

I am so thrilled to have found this site! Ben, I first saw your YouTube video on "The 50 Greatest Books of All Time", (based on 130 lists) and was hooked! I then read Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury and Chekhov's "Selected Short Stories". I'm a little ahead on War and Peace and loving it! I had never read it. I can't believe how much more I am getting out of my reading now that I am writing thoughts in the margins and "getting to really know the characters. Thank you so much, Ben!! What a treat for sure. As for Shakespeare, I'm a definite newcomer. Beside seeing a few Shakespeare's in the park in the summer and reading one or two works in High School, there's been no Shakespeare in my reading diet. I am an avid fiction reader. I read authors from around the world; it was how I learned so much about cultures. I remember reading Naguib Mahfouz's Trilogy, starting with Palace Walk and being shocked at how differently women were treated. Now a lot of that is in the media, but back then, we were unaware. Reading Haldor Laxness, JM Coetzee, Ha Jin and of course, Russian authors, taught me so much. After seeing your 50 greats, I saw The Yale Shakespeare complete works in a used bookstore and bought it. Now I see that that wasn't on your recommended complete works to get, but I'm going to trudge through; I'm about half way through The Comedy of Errors, taking it slowly. I am so excited to get through this list of complete works and know/hope to return to them time and time again in order to really understand all the positives that you have described. If it wasn't for this club, I would never have even thought of undertaking this!! I have read through almost all of Jhumpa Lahiri's books and short stories, along with E. Annie Proux. Some fall short, but I know that's normal. I absolutely love Alice Munro and was happy to hear that we'll be covering her at the end of this year!! I could spend hours on this site. I look forward to the group's input, and of your discussions, Ben! Thanks Everyone!

Karen Werner

I am very excited to have found this book club. I have always enjoyed reading but only have read the classics selectively not reading all of one author. The only author that I have read most of is Neil Gaiman who I find quite amusing and captivating. I read Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet in High School. I am thinking of this read of all of Shakespearean works as my first time. I look forward to it and find that listening to you Ben is very motivating. I have gotten through about 1/4 of War and Peace and really love it. I enjoy hearing everyone’s ideas and look forward to joining you on this brilliant adventure!

Deborah Broaddus

I have been reading and watching Shakespeare for many years now but still feel like I know so little. I belong to a small and devoted group of gardeners who have been cultivating and tending a Shakespeare Garden on the campus of the University of Colorado for 30+ years, this in a somewhat loose association with the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, which has been performing in the summer months in our lovely outdoor theater since the 1950s. Our garden group gets together in the winter months to discuss the plays and their plants that will be performed in the upcoming season. We will be gathering in a couple of weeks to start with Much Ado, followed in later weeks by Winter's Tale, King Lear, and Comedy of Errors. I am going to engage in this chronological project with some gusto and try to move into a more defined understanding of why I love Shakespeare so very much.

Yoon

My relationship with Shakespeare, like many others, has been solely through schooling. I read Julius Caesar and Romeo & Juliet at far too young of an age to understand them, and I think that's were my dislike of Shakespeare came from. Throughout university, I read Titus Andronicus, Twelfth Night, and Much Ado About Nothing. I learned that I thoroughly enjoy his comedies but not so much his other works. I am excited to finally read and digest Shakespeare outside the realm of the education system. I think I will enjoy (and understand) his works better than I ever have before.

Jonathon Glover
>>99492521

Something that I think could help is to listen to audio versions of the play. If you can read along at the same time then even better!

Jonathon Glover
>>99515157

What a wonderful thing to be a part of. I have attending some shows by ‘Sport for Jove’ in Sydney who do events such as these and have always found them illuminating and entertaining.

Tatiana

What is the timeframe, when do you start and at what pace, one a week? I need to coordinate with my War and Peace and outside reading schedule.

Renee

I love Shakespeare, especially the comedies. However, I haven’t read everything. The history plays have intimidated me in the past, so I’m looking forward to tackling them this year. The only author that I have read completely is Jane Austen. My A+ works, in addition to Austin’s are The Odyssey, Moby Dick, The Scarlett Letter, Lord of the Rings, and Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather. For Shakespeare it’s Much Ado About Nothing and Twelfth Night.

Teresa Anne Rust

I don't recall having read one even one Shakespeare play all the way through. I have seen multiple play and TV adaptations and love them. I am so excited about actually reading through the plays of Shakespeare!

Elizabeth Madden
>>99445083

Rashmi, as a committed Joycean, and a great lover, in particular, of Ulysses, I heartily recommend listening to the novel read/performed. It has a reputation for being very daunting to read, and certainly, as something of a Joyce scholar I would say it is best undertaken with some expert guidance, and it does require the patience to re-read the text while going along-it's not a book that is a one bite only text, that one reads purely to enjoy the story or even just to enjoy the interplay between characters- but it is a very, very rewarding book to read.

Tatiana

Feeding some Shakespeare into an AI content spinner - Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.

Tatiana

And the AI responded with: The endless cycle of time marches vigorously onward, dragging us along to dust and nothingness. Our yesterday's point only in one direction: the ultimate end of life. The greatest works are but momentary performance on a stage before fading into nonexistence; they signify none other than our own mortality. AND Life is a fleeting, ephemeral thing; our days flit by like shadows on the stage of existence. All we are left with in the end is an insignificant story told by fools, full of sound and fury yet signifying nothing when all has been said and done.AND Time marches on, never ceasing in its relentless pursuits. Yesterday's successes are often tomorrow's failures and life is nothing but a fleeting shadow that soon fades from memory. The story of our lives holds little substance when seen as a whole - an empty tale spun by someone who lacks sense and understanding despite all the noise they utter signifying no real consequence at the end.

Tatiana

And again, let's sprinkle some more Shakespearian spices into the AI funnel - this time we'll summon the witches: When shall we three meet again? In thunder, lightning, or in rain? AND THE AI RESPONDS WITH: Let's reunite soon! Will we brave the storms and meet in thunder, lightning, or rain? AND When will our next meeting be? Will it come in a tumultuous storm or amidst the gentle fall of raindrops? AND FINALLY Let us reunite soon! Shall we do so in a dynamic thunderstorm or the peaceful pitter-patter of rain?

Jonathon Glover

I know that I personally find Shakespeare’s comedies harder to follow. There are a variety of reasons but the heavy use of wordplay and puns and the shifting of characters (cross dressing, changing of names etc.) means I’m often looking at a summary/synopsis to get by. I tend to find the histories and tragedies a little easier ti follow. What difficulties do you guys see encountering on this journey?

mariah schneider

I struggled a bit with reading a Comedy of Errors, but I found a Youtube video of a performance that is easy to follow. It doesn't line up perfectly with The Oxford Shakespeare edition that I am reading but it is close enough if anyone else feels like they aren't quite following the plot by reading it alone. Here it is: https://youtu.be/BkaHAPDPBaQ

Elaine Klarquist

The Comedy of Errors. Well I felt I was in the audience and all I wanted to do is scream they are twins. There are two sets of twins. I think the wording was slightly poetic.

June.

For easier reading,go quickly through your copy of Comedy and mark all the entries,underlining either Ephesus or Syracuse. Read the opening speech of Aegeon twice to be sure of the back story.After that it is just slapstick, word play and the confusion inherent in two sets of identical twins. You will enjoy it if you don'find farce anxiety making. The applause at the end is the audience exhaling.It could be called Alls Well That Ends Well but William kept that for another day.

Valerie Brackenridge

I have only read a few Shakespeare plays and I love watching them being performed as that obviously helps my understanding of the story. I'm really excited to give this project a try.

Floribelle

As a former theater student, I’ve long had a love for Shakespeare. I’ve read many of his plays for English and acting classes. For one of my class assignments I picked out Julia’s monologue from Two Gentlemen from Verona. The speech is over-dramatic for comedic affect and was great fun to act out. I had never heard of this particular play and so I sought out a synopsis. I was shocked. I thought to myself, “Was this really one of Shakespeare’s plays? This one sucks.” The plot seemed silly and dumb and I was unsatisfied with the conclusion. It seems the general consensus regarding this play is similar to my first impression. But I’m looking forward to actually reading the play with an open mind regardless of my initial reaction. I’m also excited to reread the plays I haven’t read in years. I’ve grown up a lot and have experienced many of the trials and tribulations of life since then, so I’m sure these plays will resonate with me even more this time around.

Matthew Annable
>>99494006

Were those the Oxford Conted courses, Tanya, and if so did you take the one on the Wars of the Roses? I took that course three or four years ago and one of the things that I remember was the observation that many of our modern-day assumptions about the period and the characters involved (particularly Richard 3) have come to us through Shakespeare’s representation, which is frequently at odds with the genuine historical evidence. We’ve come to view Shakespeare’s plays as an historical record rather than as wonderful works of imagination (put to some political purpose which suited him at the time) and as a result they’ve to some extent become an obstacle to understanding the history of that period rather than a help.

Matthew Annable
>>99566129

I agree with you about the comedies, Jonathan. There are only so many Elizabethan puns about codpieces that induce hilarity today and it’s the action rather than the words that make them watchable nowadays. I’ve seen productions that have been some of the funniest things I’ve ever seen on stage (a production of Comedy of Errors at the Barbican about thirty years ago comes to mind, along with Tamsin Grieg’s Malvolio more recently) but it’s the acting, comedic timing and physical comedy that makes them and I find the effects of those hard to reproduce just by reading the texts. Some of the verbal humour is timeless - the ‘quoth I, quoth he, quoth who?’ exchange in C of E still leaps off the page, but if you have to refer to footnotes to understand why something is funny it’s bound to lose some of its impact. For me, at least, the production is everything when it comes to the comedies. I’ve read Comedy of Errors over the past couple of days and then watched a recording of the 2021 outdoor RSC production last night, which was OK but not as funny as the one I remember from thirty years ago. During the ‘She is spherical, like a globe’ repartee, the actor playing Dromio of S breaks the fourth wall and says to the audience ‘Hey, give us a break, these jokes are 400 years old’ which got a bigger laugh than the text itself, which I think illustrates my point.

Florian Pesantes

Dear Ben, the effect of your diet and workout is truly impressive. Having met Shakespeare at the age of ten, you must be just over four hundred years old. No one could tell 😉!

Chris Lohroff

Ben’s comments around the 9:00 mark about the impact of over-intellectualizing are very interesting to me. I feel like I see this happen often with seminary students who come to school full of love for God and leave disillusioned. My daughter went through an experience in high school. She LOVED art and spent a lot of time drawing and painting. She took a class on art and ended up giving up the hobby for a long time. That felt like a massive fail on her instructor’s part but I think it was a case of what was mentioned.

Florian Pesantes

For once I couldn’t wait to start, you got me with your introduction, Ben! I was more than sure I wouldn’t be able to comply with the task of reading all this in a lifetime. But you made my mouth water. And if I ever feel overwhelmed by the bounty of great literature you’re proposing I just have to look at the pair of sturdy sheep behind you at the wall above the ever changing shelve of books. Sheep soothe me magically. I remember the ones below the cottage I’d once rented just at the northern end of Grasmere. I didn’t want to leave the house to explore, just watching the sheep was enough to fill my soul with ease. Maybe just the love of donkeys surpasses this. I had my neighbour’s in my garden to feed on my apples and grass and he would jump towards me like a happy dog although more than forty years of age. What a treat for a Saturday afternoon. An easy read, even for a non native speaker. Hot, fast, witty, hilarious. And such a sweet end, the two brothers hand in hand. Definitely my favourite characters: the Dromios! Either the villains in the tragedies or the jesters in the comedies, the bard liked them best it seems to me. Let me use your rating tool: 2 points for strength of writing: the iambic pentameter, not stomping along but almost hidden behind the easy flow of the dialogues. The many alliterations. Then of course the quotable ‘Marry, he must have a long spoon that must eat with the devil.’ (Act 4, Scene 3) 1 point for the characterisation. They are fun but not of great psychological depth. 2 points for story and structure. The symmetry, the speed, the logic in the confusion. A true first class comedy of mix-up 2 points for overall quality: uplifting, entertaining and even some deep wisdom in there: that one makes a fool of oneself easily when jumping to conclusions or worse than a fool 2 points for personal meaning: as I’m currently in a process of serious Jungian Individuation I have to employ the trickster a lot to break down the walls of pretension. The bard is a cunning trickster, isn’t he? Just take the beautiful declaration of love by the Syracusean (Act 3, Scene 2) ridiculed by the constellation. The misunderstanding. So it’s 9 points for me! I wonder how my fellow club members here see this play. A wonderful door opener.

Florian Pesantes

Oops, so overzealous to start with the assignment, for once I missed out on the questions at the end. My current relationship with Shakespeare: Different from today. I was a bit shy to start a new play as reading Proust, Les Misérables and the “Magic Mountain” takes up so much of my spare time. Now I’m determined to rush through the works as assigned, fear- and recklessly skipping the words I don’t know. Finding joy and remembering that I’m not here to start a career as a Shakespeare scholar. I’ve read all of the following authors: Thomas Mann, Max Frisch, Eric Ambler more than once, Ruth Rendell, especially her books under her alias Barbara Vine and Dorothy Sayers. Quite eclectic. Most of it before Uni. Up to the age of 17. Only recently I’d discovered poetry, my A+ poets Stefan George, RM Rilke, Yeats, Keats, Tennyson, Auden and last but not least a living poet , my dear friend Arthur L Wood. Thomas Mann my A+ novelist. Montaigne my A+ essayist. Some works of other authors I loved dearly or made great impression on me: The Henri IV novels of Thomas Mann’s brother Heinrich, Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray, Baldwin’s “Giovannis Room”, Orwell’s “Animal farm” Short stories I liked very much by Roald Dahl, Saki, Maupassant, Kipling.

S M
>>99631832

I saved your post, seeing some authors for me to explore. Happy to take any stand out suggestions if you have them. Thanks for the post.

Elizabeth Madden

I have just finished reading A Comedy of Errors. In common with others, I was finding the twists and turns of the plot hard to follow, and resorted to making my own summary while I was reading, which hel[ped a lot. It reminded me of the old Franki Howerd Comedy series Up Pompei, which dates back to the early sixties/late seventies: I will have to do a bit of research to ascertain whether or not it originates from the Roman Comedies of Plautus, et al, in terms of structure, plot, style. It also had many features I associate with the Italian Commedia Del Arte, in terms of the stock character types and the farcical, often physical comedy. I imagine that, rather than the wordplay, would have appealed more to the groundlings, though I am aware that some better-off and better-educated people would have enjoyed that just as much. The pace is fast, and one certainly wouldn't get bored, but I find the lack of character depth is less pleasing to my own tastes.

John de Vignolles
>>99663677

I was about to say "Up Pompeii" is basically Plautus, but you beat me to it! The dialoge and plots are just about the same. I can't believe the writers (of Up Pompeii) didn't know Plautus. I am sure as well that the writers of the Carry On films were well acquainted with plays like Lysistrata, they both have the innuendo and schoolboy humour! I am reminded of the letter scene with Malvolio, "these be her very Cs her Us and her Ts, and thus makes she her great Ps" ... our English teacher explained the disgusting joke (to a classful of 14 year olds), the girls went red and the boys creased up. Brilliant!

Matthew Long

Very excited about this journey. I have almost no experience with Shakespeare at all other than brief snippets from high school and the Hamlet soliloquy that I had to memorize (and somewhat remember!). I just received my copy of The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works in the mail today. Wow, this is a beast of a tome and I am really excited to dig in. The only author whose complete works I have read so far is Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time series. It is my favorite epic fantasy series and I have read it through several times. I do have a few authors that I would really like to complete and I have read a number of their works. This includes Fredrik Backman, Cormac McCarthy, John Steinbeck, Haruki Murakami, J.R.R. Tolkien, Louis L'Amour, and now many of the authors I am being introduced to here in the HLBC. My all time favorite book is East of Eden by John Steinbeck which I believe is a masterpiece. The Hobbit is definitely in my top 10. I also love A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles, Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield, and Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. I have not had too much exposure to classic literature until joining this group and I am looking forward to that.

Margaret McNally

Excited for this project!! Yet again, love the personal stories!

Rashmi

Fellow readers: Any recommendations for a Kindle edition of Shakespeare? Thank you!

Ms P
>>99749502

I have the Dover Thrift edition of the Tempest, it was pretty well formatted and it synched with the audiobook.

Ms P

I finished The Tempest last night - which brings up the total of 3 Shakespeare plays I have read so far: Hamlet ( a few years ago), The Winter's Tale last month and now this one. I'm not a great fan of drama and my knowledge of Shakespeare is poor, so I feel that this is the most important part of the syllabus for me and one that I will try to keep up with. If I have to sacrifice some something it will be some of the novels on the list, which would be re-reads. I don't know if I will fall in love with Shakespeare's drama by the end of the process but I know that it will make my understanding of literature more rounded.

Elizabeth Madden

I would be interested to know whether anyone can come up with an ingenious way of staging the last scene, assuming one had only one person playing both Antipholuses and one playing both Dromios (given that doubling and more of parts was very common and necessary for acting players of the time)-avoiding the fairly simple remedy of facial beards and similar clothing.

John de Vignolles

Whilst searching Audible for new copies of various Shakey plays, I found out that there are several films such as Star Wars and Back to the Future which were re-written in Shakespeare style, and, as it happens, have also been staged. This is great fun (and Go, Darth!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mVO5r9kgOY

K L Searle

So glad to be part of this amazing book club! I just joined in December and am loving everything. I've been fortunate to have seen a lot of Shakespeare on stage, including some wonderful productions of Comedy of Errors. The scene that always makes me laugh is when Dromio of S. describes Nell in terms of all the countries he can find in her. It probably couldn’t be written today, but it can be hilarious onstage. If I had to pick a more serious quote, I love when Adriana says to Antipholus: For know, my love, as easy mayst thou fall A drop of water in the breaking gulf, And take unmingled thence that drop again Without addition or diminishing, As take from my thyself and not me too. I think that’s a beautiful description of love. One thing I noticed in this reading is how manipulative the Abbess is in the end. She baits Adriana into saying that she (Adriana) has chastised Antipholus for his behavior, and then the Abbess turns around and blames Adriana for everything. The Abbess says: The consequence is, then, thy jealous fits Hath scared thy husband from the use of wits. I don’t think Adriana deserves that.

Sherral S

I found a copy of Shakespeare's plays at a little free library. It was owned in the 1950's by a literature club leader and it has a bunch of notes inside. I'm thrilled.

hardcoreliterature
>>99790413

You've certainly got three of his strongest read, Paola! Nice one on finishing The Tempest last night :) I cannot wait to hear what you make of him as we go through his canon. It will be fascinating to see what kinds of plays end up moving you the most!

Elizabeth Madden
>>99802029

I notice that you referred to Shakey-I thought that was only me and my students over the years, who caught the habit from me. We also referred to Stanislavski as Stan and Bertold Brecht as Bert!

Elizabeth Madden
>>99832089

I think we have to look at the play via the eyes of Shakespeare's contemporaries, as well as make our own judgments about characters and their actions. In Shakespeare's time, it would be common to regard women as inferior beings who owed their husbands and fathers total obedience, so nagging or complaining would have been considered wrong, and punishable, often by beatings. I am not saying that Sh's point of view is necessarily reflected here but it was certainly one many people held in his era. The same is the case when we come to look at, for example, The Taming of the Shrew-Petruchio's behaviour to Katharina would have him end up in court and, possibly, prison, nowadays.

John de Vignolles

There is a short story, I forget who wrote it, where there is a time machine and its designer brings Shakey to the present day. Shakey enrols in a university course on Shakespeare (in disguise of course). But Shakey fails the course which is run by a feminist, post-modern, post-colonial, post-goodsense lecturer! If anybody can remember the story, please let me know. JG Ballard? Isaac Asimov? Arthur C. Clarke? A.E. van Vogt? I'm better at remembering numbers, I can still remember my g/f's telephone number from 1974.

Ashleigh
>>99488677

Your English students are lucky to have you! I hope they get into Shakespeare too!

TrickyVicky

A walk to the local used bookstore yielded The Complete Works of Shakespeare (Collins) and Bloom’s Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. Both for $10! Hooray!

Teresa Anne Rust

I think I may have read Shakespeare in High School but I do not remember. I have WANTED to read and "get" Shakespeare for over 40 years but have always shied away from actually get down to reading the plays. I have seen several Shakespeare plays at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, OR. They have some first rate productions. I have also watched movie versions of Shakespeare and I have really enjoyed them as well. So, I am very excited to embark on this year long reading journey. Yes, I have read a writer's work. I have read all of Jane Austen, George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, the Brontes, D. E. Stevenson, C. S. Lewis, Tolkien, and not sure who else. I love reading everything of a favorite author. It makes me feel better connected to the author. These authors are all people I also admire. I think Austen, Eliot, Hardy, and Tolkien are all A+ writers. Can't think of anyone else right now. :) Thanks again Ben for your amazing heartfelt lectures!