The Shakespeare Project

Here is one of those grand projects I mentioned earlier. It is in some way a return to a project I started back in the summer of 1996, when I attempted to read all of Shakespeare during the month of June. I gave up on the project that July in large part because I ran out of steam and had bit off more than I could chew, but also because I took off for Spain (where I spent the rest of the summer on an amazing vacation).

Throughout my academic life I’ve read a significant portion of Shakespeare’s plays. I have however neither read all of them nor read them in a systematic way. So the project now is to read all of Shakespeare’s plays in the next 14 months (deadline to be done with the project 31 December 2010). So I am giving myself a significantly more longer period of time than before. However, I expect myself to actually understand them and to look up relevant secondary literature when appropriate.

The next rule of the project is why this may be on interest to anyone other than me: I will write blog entries on every play as I go along giving my thoughts on what I am reading. I would love it for people to make comments on what I say and to correct me when I make egregious exegetical mistakes. I plan on reading them in this order (because it is the order used by Marjorie Garber in her encyclopedic work “Shakespeare: After All”):

The Two Gentlemen of Verona

The Taming of the Shrew

Titus Andronicus

Henry VI Part 1

Henry VI Part 2

Henry VI Part 3

Richard III

The Comedy of Errors

Love’s Labor Lost

Romeo and Juliet

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Richard II

King John

The Merchant of Venice

Henry IV Part 1

Henry IV Part 2

The Merry Wives of Windsor

Much Ado About Nothing

Henry V

Julius Caesar

As You Like It

Hamlet

Twelfth Night

Troilus and Cressida

Measure for Measure

Othello

All’s Well That Ends Well

Timon of Athens

King Lear

Macbeth

Anthony and Cleopatra

Pericles

Coriolanus

Cymbeline

The Winter’s Tale

The Tempest

Henry VIII

The Two Noble Kinsmen

I hope all you Shakespeare scholars, or those of you not scholars but just interested readers, out there tune in and give me feedback on what I write or maybe even join me in this completely Quixotic adventure :-) thank you.