I was thinking recently about people who put “Read all of Shakespeare’s Works” on their life’s to-do list.  I’ve done it (for a piece of educational software that never saw the light of day).  Well, not counting Two Noble Kinsmen.  I didn’t even know that one existed, at the time.Do I remember all of them?  Nah, not really.  Just the big ones.    So here’s my question.  Someone you know is about to embark on this personal challenge, and expects it take quite awhile. So she asks you, “What order should I read them in?”  Of course there’s something to be said for reading them chronologically, but let’s assume that your friend isn’t interested in the academic exercise.  She wants to get right to the good stuff and see what this Shakespeare character is all about.  It’s your opinion about what to read first that will determine your friend’s introduction to the world of Shakespeare. Go for it.  Which are your top three, and why?  You going with entertainment value, or depth?  Midsummer, or King Lear?  Popularity or esoterica, Romeo and Juliet or Cymbeline? Here’s my list:

1. Hamlet, for obvious reasons, but also for personal ones.  Hamlet’s the one that “broke the code” for me, and opened up the door to Shakespeare’s works in the first place.  I don’t claim to be an expert, nor do I think it’s a piece of literature written by the hand of god.  I happen to think that much of the second half is pretty boring, saved only by performances from Claudius and Ophelia. 
2. The Tempest.  I pick this one because many people will otherwise miss it, and it’s really one of the best family-oriented stories that still has some depth to it (unlike a light comedy).  It’s a fairy tale with a happy ending, it’s a story of princesses and weddings, shipwrecks and wizards and fairies and monsters.  It’s revenge, and redemption.  It’s father and child.  Nobody dies, everybody wins.  My kids will know this story before they hit grade school.
3. Macbeth.  I think of the “great tragedies” that Macbeth might be the best for entertainment value.  Murder.  Ghosts.  Crazy people.  There’s not as much complexity in Macbeth as there is in, say, King Lear.  I think that audiences can understand Macbeth better.  Everybody understands ambition.  Everybody understands having that devilish voice whisper in your ear to go ahead and do it, nobody will ever know.  I love the entire last act of Macbeth, how he basically goes complete insane with his immortality complex, and then how he comes crashing back to reality in his final scene and yet still manages one of the great hero’s endings.  Give me “Lay on, Macduff” over “The rest is silence” any day.

  Next?

This morning while doing the breakfast dishes, the morning news was on in the other room.  Out of the corner of my eye I caught a story about the “Friar Laurence Building.”  Naturally I ran into the room, Tivo’d back a minute…to discover that there was, in fact, a “Fire in Four Lawrence Buildings.” What can I say, it’s a slow holiday weekend.  Have a nice Labor Day everybody!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070831/ap_on_fe_st/odd_et_tu_brutus A man playing Brutus paused and excused himself, saying “I seem to have stabbed myself” in Aspen during an outdoor performance of “Scenes from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar” on Wednesday. “Actors normally don’t use real knives…but I hadn’t thought an actor might stab himself,” the director said. Brutus was taken to the hospital by Portia (nice wife) for stitches.  Who knows, maybe while she’s there she can be treated for the whole “swallow’d fire” thing.

http://mirror.augusta.com/stories/083007/com_141764.shtml I’m sorry, maybe I’m the only one that finds this article amusing.  It’s about the director for a little community theatre somewhere in Southtown (it never says the state — South Carolina, maybe?) putting on some Shakespeare. It starts out with a quote from The Tempest, but they’re actually doing Midsummer’s.  Perhaps the author could have started out with “What fools these mortals be” instead? 🙂 Reasons why they chose this play (direct from the article):

• Since it’s Shakespearean, it’s public domain and she doesn’t have to pay royalties.
• It’s a comedy.
• “It really hadn’t been done before around here, so people wouldn’t be too sick of it.”
• It was a favorite of Mr. Holubar, a college friend of hers, who died their freshman year.

(So glad that the #1 reason is the royalty thing, and the last one mentioned is the whole “honoring a dead friend” thing :)) I like how the article quotes the Washington Post, that Dream is “filled with love and laughter, mischief and matrimony and a whole lot of magic spells.”  It really does give you the feeling that these people have never actually seen a Shakespeare play before. Perhaps funniest of all, of course, is that the town is called “McDuffie” and nobody saw fit to pun on that.  Just imagine if they’d done Macbeth?  Everytime somebody mentions the name on stage, the audience could scream like a rock concert: “Lay on, Macduff!” “WOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh, wait, he’s not talking to us.  NEVER MIND!” (The entire plot of the 1980’s movie Porky’s II revolves around the conservative southerners trying to shut down a school Shakespeare production, which I believe is also Midsummer.  There’s a classic battle between principal and priest comparing who had more dirty words, Shakespeare (“what, with my tongue in your tail?”) or the Bible (something something book of Solomon).  But for the life of me I can’t find anything online. )

Found via Samizdat blog, this e-book entitled Threading Shakespeare’s Sonnets makes me wishI could run around to all of those other sites on the web that claim to do a paraphrase / summary of each sonnet and say, “No, you fool, this is how you do it.”  Instead of trying to paraphrase word for word, Professor Bennett instead starts a conversation about what Shakespeare is trying to accomplish in the whole – the “threads of thought”, so to speak.  Most of the commentary is in the form of questions, backed up by references to the text.  What you end up with is a commentary that assumes you already know what you’re talking about, while at the same time reminding you.  Doesn’t treat you like you’re stupid, in other words. Example (from Sonnet 17, a favorite of mine): Here he looks to the future and the possible survival of the youth despite all-powerful time. Initially he questions what “the world” will think. Will it believe the speaker’s account of the youth’s worthiness (“high deserts,” l. 2)? If there are doubts, heaven (which by rights is more just than time or the world) knows that the speaker’s verses are like a tomb or monument that conceals the youth’s real life by not showing half his good qualities. (Note the change from the treatment of the grave and tomb in Sonnets 1 and 4).
After this pat on his own back, the speaker reveals more concern with appearances. He praises the physical beauty of the youth, especially his face and eyes (which will later prove to be deceptive)…. Also nice is the regular reference back to common themes (threads) in the other sonnets. The work is presented as PDF / ebook, rather than HTML, but I’m not sure why he could not have chosen to dynamically link such references.
Still, an excellent resource and I’m glad I found it.  Go browsing for your favorite sonnet and see what it has to say.  (Rats, I’m a little disappointed in the short treatment that 130 gets!)