"Brush up on your Shakespeare. . ."

Normally I'd try and sound sophisticated, but I'm from the southern Piedmont of NC, so I'll just say "Sup y'all?"

Who else is reading this? We need publicity. Facebook pages, word of mouf, emailed links, posters, sky messages over beaches or athletic venues. . .

I just graduated college on Sunday. I'm working at a wine store before entering grad school for my Ph.D. in Early Modern literature. Kellen's pretty much my boy, and I get down with the British Renaissance. . .so I'm along for the ride. I've got my own reading list of Renaissance texts before grad school, and I hope that will provide some intellectual context for Shakespeare.

As to my own reading schedule. . .hmm. There is value to a chronological approach, which would allow me to see the development of an artist into the Bard. But K-man's forging ahead with that one, so I'll give him some respect. Then there's the block approach, as in reading all the tragedies, comedies, and histories in a group according to genre. . .but that leads to the possibility of reading Hamlet, Lear, and Othello back-to-back-to-back, and that would mess anyone up. But then where do the sonnets and other poems fit in? They are problematic for both the chronological and genre-based approaches since we don't know when they were composed and because they're their own thing. . .

So I guess what I'm going to do is read a comedy, a tragedy, a history, and pepper some sonnets in between, and go in a cyclical fashion from there until I run out of things to read. I won't split up historical sequences, like Henry IV1,IV2, and V, or the Richard (I and II) plays. . .I'm looking at a list of the plays now:

Troilus and Cressida: got to be better than Chaucer's interpretation of the same story. . .ugh

Merchant of Venice: listed as a comedy. . .I mean, it has comedic elements, but tell that to Shylock

Venus and Adonis: heard it's terrible, but I'll see

Titus Andronicus: heard it's violent as hell. . .but I don't know if it can top the Gloucester scene in "Lear," holla if you know what I mean.

So what to start with? I've actually never read the "Tempest." So we'll go with that. Catch y'all later, TH

What We're All About

Hello there. If you don't mind, I'd like to take a moment to let you know what we are all about. This blog is a repository for a sort of collective journaling from a few people as they endeavor to read the entire works of William Shakespeare over the course of the summer. So, in stupid invitation form:

What? The entire works of William Shakespeare and ancilliary materials.

Where? Here.

When? This summer.

Who? Me and some others who will introduce themselves shortly.

Why? That's a good question. I'll explain my reasons and let the others explain theirs.

My name is Kellen. I graduated college about one year ago and now work at a psycholinguistics lab helping to devise and run various experiments. I have apparently decided that I want to spend my free time reading and rereading Shakespeare. I'm doing this because I like silly projects and I do, really, earnestly like Shakespeare.

Actually, that's not true.

I like Hamlet. I love Hamlet. I've read tons and tons of plays, and I like none of them as much as I like Hamlet. In fact, some of my greatest disappointments have been the other Shakespeare plays I've read. None of them match up to Hamlet, by my estimation.

So why read Shakespeare, again? Because I want Hamlet in its context. I want to situate it in the author's wider work.  If I can understand Shakespeare better, I'll understand and like Hamlet better. This means not just reading Billy's texts, but reading his sources and his contemporaries. I have made peace with the fact that I will be reading The Spanish Tragedy at best, and at worst, Greek "comedy" that I don't care for one bit. Or even worse, Shakespeare's own comedies. FIRST POST BURN!

In any case, let me lay out the ways I plan to approach our dear Billy Boy.

1. Desperately searching for relevance to Hamlet.

2. Desperately examining source texts and scope of influence, allusions, etc.

3. Looking for a linguistic angle on things. That's what I'm trained to do.

4. Heavy discussion of any movie based on the play. However loosely. This is the "10 Things I Hate About You" approach. I expect I will fall back on it often.

5. Loose, loose connection between Shakespeare and something else in my life. For example, right now I'm watching a lot of playoff basketball: BAM! Done.

In any case, that's how I'm going to do this thing. I'll let the others lay out their approach. My next post will be a little more about Hamlet and why it fascinates me so much and then after that I will finally start reading and writing about some plays. First up: The Comedy of Errors. Why? Because it's one of Shakespeare's earliest, least sophisticated, and shortest. It won't know what hit it.