William Shakespeare: The Complete Works

Holy fucknuts, you guys. I can't write a straight ahead review of this. I mean for fuck's sake, I've read Shakespeare. This is the man who has a richer body of work than The Bible, okay? And The Bible is by a multitude of authors. Shakespeare is one. What the fuck do you say to this? I've read not only all the plays in this volume (except Edward III which is almost certainly not by the Bard barring some revisions) but the poems as well (barring Passionate Pilgrim and Funeral Elegy because again they're not Shakespeare, just read them and you'll see).

Shakespeare wrote like no other writer be they contemporaries of him or otherwise. I mean seriously his style is so indelible, it can only be described as Shakespearean. It was in everything show more he did, whether it be complex out-of-order line structures, brilliant and original imagery, English-only wordplay, or anything you can think of, even layering of differently phrased same things said (line memes).

And the importance of his work is not best exemplified in any single expression so much as an intake of the complete and whole because everything interconnected. Everything built on everything else. Everything was an expansion, not just an extension. There are people who wrote singular works better than probably anything individual by Shakespeare (The Odyssey, The Divine Comedy, Moby Dick, War And Peace, Ulysses) but nothing compares to the richness of his ouvre, and I would even include Joyce in there IN SPITE of Shakespeare's recidivism of sources (particularly Holinshed for his history plays, the history "ghostwriter"). Nobody turned of phrase like Shakespeare, nobody set up a metaphor like Shakespeare, nobody even wrote a GASTON like Shakespeare (Falstaff, people, the ultimate human).

Now, I can include Tolstoy's criticism of Shakespeare here. That he didn't relate to those of all walks of life. I think that means Tolstoy lived as a peasant and wrote many things for peasants and the peasant lifestyle. That's probably an unfair potshot because I can easily imagine Shakespeare was held to standards by his often very royal audience. This makes it so his peasants aren't always the most brilliant while the royals are almost always praised as though recognized without clothes (often incognito). Shakespeare could very well have been a heavy royalist and monarchist, but he could as easily be at least a thousand other things. Say what you want but the man hid himself better than anybody this side of Homer. I can't personally strike him for that. show less

What can you say about this? I can say that, unlike the Norton Shakespeare which I owned at one point, this does not have THREE SEPARATE KING LEARs. And that's a good thing, I think.

Mind you, I love King Lear and think it's perhaps Shakespeare's greatest play (of those I have read, anyway -- I have friends who would be surprised, I think, to learn that I haven't read them all) but the editorial ... something that resulted in the Norton having THREE DAMNED KING LEARs is. Well. Something to behold, certainly.

Bevington's notes are quite good. Overall I'm quite pleased with this Complete Shakespeare -- I've owned a few, and this is to my mind the best. I'd love to own one that is easier to hold and read -- the Norton was that, but the paper show more was so thin that the print on the other side showed through, which was a real problem.

UPDATE: currently read The Merry Wives of Windsor, which was better than I expected (c'mon -- it's fun!) and am now in the middle of As You Like It, which I honestly never liked much -- it's better this time around. Overall I have always found WS's comedies a bit eye-roll-y, but now that I'm older they have more appeal. Not sure why that is.

Here too I'll insert a note that, though I do like this edition, it follows the Comedies - Histories - Tragedies - Romances layout that I've come to rather dislike. For those of us plodders who like to read a book straight through, that means a gob of comedies at the start, a gob of histories in the middle, a gob of tragedies, then a gob of Romances at the end. I'd prefer a chronological arrangement (of course any such involves some speculation), myself. show less

Because I am using these reviews as a way to look back upon the books that have been significant events in my reading life, of course I cannot omit Shakespeare. But that’s all LibraryThing needs now: one more review of the complete works of William Shakespeare, especially printed works, not performances.

So instead, I’m gonna use this space for something else. I was a teacher for forty-five years. Before my retirement, I taught Shakespeare to eighth graders, to high-school seniors, to college freshmen and sophomores in required English courses, to undergraduate English majors and graduate students, to practicing English teachers. Here are my 7 Rules for Reading Shakespeare:

1. Don’t.

Yep, you heard me. Don’t read Shakespeare. show more First, go see a live performance. Shakespeare didn’t write books; he wrote scripts. (Well, he did publish a couple of long poems and a book of sonnets, but I’m talking about his plays.) Probably he was making changes in those scripts right up to opening night; probably he had to deal with proud old actors who ad-libbed whenever they chose; probably there were different versions of those scripts for different audiences (if you’re performing in King James’s court, it wouldn’t hurt to have at least one heroic Scotsman somewhere in the cast!).

So go see Shakespeare performed. I learned this as a ninth grader, when a teacher took me to see the traveling troop of the Barter Theater put on their version of The Merchant of Venice. I saw the real thing, and it was obvious that Bassanio was a dandy, Portia would be the head of their household, Shylock was scammed (his daughter! and his ducats!) but he got the best lines anyway, and Antonio, the merchant? Well, he wasn’t as good a businessman as Shylock and he was used by Bassanio. He was a patsy. I was hooked—the lights, the settings, the costumes, but mostly these people. All the world’s a stage, but Shakespeare’s stage is a world. “O brave new world, / That has such people in ’t!”

2. If you can’t see a live performance, check out a video from the library. In fact, check out two or three of the same play. You’ll see there are at least as many Hamlets as there are productions of Hamlet. Yep, Shakespeare wrote scripts, but directors decide how to stage scripts, and actors give each character a voice, a face, a posture, and a personality. You can compare Mel Gibson’ Hamlet with Kevin Kline’s, with Richard Burton’s, with Laurence Olivier’s.

3. If you have to read the text without seeing a performance (or when you read it after seeing a performance), read it as a script. That means avoid those massive, scholarly tomes with the complete works in one volume. There are neat paperback editions that you can slip in your hip pocket and hold easily in the palm of your hand while you read the lines as if you’re trying out for the part. Don’t say “Friends, Romans, countrymen,” sitting down. Declaim. With a script in your hand that you can wave around on an imaginary stage, not a tome too heavy to lift off the desk. The edition of Shakespeare’s works that I have kept on my library shelves for many years consists of 39 little volumes (Henry Altemus Company, ca 1900), old as the hills, but they just fit in my hand. Each play is its own script, not pp. 731-823 in a heavy volume.

And that leads to the next rule, maybe the most important one after #1.

4. Don’t just read Shakespeare; perform Shakespeare. Become a character; say the lines; imagine a stage with props and costumes and sound effects. You gotta have thunder and lightning along with “When shall we three meet again?” Read those lines with a drum roll.

I learned this lesson the first time I taught a Shakespeare play. It was in English IV: Macbeth, of course. The class I remember best had 38 students, 33 boys who had already failed English IV and were making it up, or who were afraid they would fail it in the fall and lose their football eligibility. I had at least two running backs and several linemen. It was a summer-school class, and four of the five girls were pregnant, often experiencing morning sickness. Back in those days, pregnant girls were suspended during the regular school year, but they could go to summer school. (Go figure!) I knew I would never get that class to read Macbeth as homework. So I hammed it up in class. “Out damned spot!”

Then it occurred to me that I ought to be letting them ham it up. So I divided them into five groups, assigned each group an act, and let them decide how to perform it—in modern dress, if they chose, with props and enough costuming to distinguish one character from another. (“No, you can’t bring in a real switch blade knife, Kenny Goosetree. Make a dagger out of cardboard, or use a ruler from math class.” “Sure, Luther, that’s a good idea; you can use tomato ketchup for blood.”) Each group was given fifteen minutes of performing time. They had to choose their scenes and lines. Suddenly, they were involved. Guys fought over who would play the witches. Non-readers were reading. Each group even got to help me come up with questions for the unit exam.

5. Use your imagination. Read Shakespeare as if you were a Hollywood or Broadway director. Whom would you cast as Othello? as Desdemona? as Iago? What colors will be predominant in the setting for a scene? the costumes? the lights? Are Troilus and Cressida going to dress like Greeks? Or like Elizabethans? Or in simple, formal white and black?

6. Don’t try to read all of Shakespeare's plays. Choose a few. Even after forty-five years, I’m not sure I ever read all the King Henry’s or Timon of Athens. Pick out a few of your favorites, and go back to them time and again. Deciding which are your favorites and why will be half the fun. This week, my favorite comedy is As You Like It, but next week it may be A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Rosalind and Bottom will always be two of my favorite characters. Of the histories, the one I go back to time after time is the first one I taught to college freshmen: Henry IV, Part I. How can you possibly have it better than a play with Falstaff and Hotspur and Prince Hal all in it, and with the former Henry Bolingbroke himself always in the background? In my mind, Hamlet will always be the greatest tragedy ever written, I suppose—one of the truly great pieces of literature of all time. It’s a different play every time I read it. But most of the tragedies eventually call me. Even Antony and Cleopatra. Even Coriolanus. I always want to finish Shakespeare with The Tempest. It’s just as well to end with a romance. I can empathize with most of his characters; for example, with Romeo and Richard II, with Benedict and Petruchio, even with Mercutio and Banquo. But I can be Prospero, the ageing magician relinquishing his craft.

7. So choose a few, and experience each one of them multiple times. You don’t read Shakespeare like a novel, beginning with chapter one, going all the way to the end, then putting the book down. No. You want to see the play; maybe hear it on tape; perhaps compare filmed versions. When you read it, you may want to think of yourself in multiple roles: not just Hamlet, but also Horatio, Laertes, Ophelia, Gertrude, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Claudius praying, even Fortinbras and “alas, poor Yorick.” They all have their stories to tell.

Remember, it’s a script. After you read Act III, you may want to go back to Act I. You’ll understand the characters better now. Those lines make more sense. Go back and forth.

Probably the only works I’ve read more often than my favorite Shakespeare plays are the Pentateuch and the Gospels. And I read them the same way, repeating certain scriptures over and over again. Shakespeare’s plays may not be the Holy Bible, but they are inspired. “There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, / Rough-hew them how we will” is still one of my favorite scriptures. [Hamlet 5.2]

So here they are:

Seven Rules for Reading a Shakespeare Play

1. Don’t read it; see it live.
2. Or at least on video.
3. Read it as a script
4. Don’t just read it; perform it.
5. Imagine yourself a Hollywood or Broadway director.
6. Choose a few.
7. More than once: back and forth, over and over. show less

I've now read all the plays (many multiple times) except for King John and Henry VI (1-3) & VIII, which I'll get around to at some point. My views on Shakespeare (garnered after years of teaching him as well) are summed up in my concise essay "A Shakespeare sex-and-violence starter kit" (https://ishamcook.com/2012/01/29/shakespeare-sex-and-violence-starter-kit/). I had David Bevington, the editor, as my teacher in several courses at the University of Chicago back in the '80s. Now, for sheer ability to create worlds through speech and dialogue alone (the Elizabethan stage largely lacked props and scenery), Shakespeare is the gold standard for all fiction and drama writers. I say this as a skeptic of the timeworn piety that "Shakespeare" show more the writer and Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon were the same person. Who really wrote Shakespeare's plays is the greatest literary mystery of all time. No, it's neither Edward de Vere nor any of the other long trotted-out usual suspects. We just don't know (a good place to start is Diana Price's "Shakespeare's Unorthodox Biography"). show less

I’m not sure what I could do to summarize so many different works of several different kinds, so let me say this: Shakespeare is like the beginning of a great conversation. It lets you participate in something. People tend to have the impulse either to ignore or reject it, shutting down the conversation, or else to seize on it and take it away like a car or some expensive status symbol—something that you have and they don’t. “The closer to the light, the deeper the shadow.” (Jung). But it’s a poor life that avoids the light. It is a conversation, one that began before we were born and will continue after we are dead. And it is part of our true life, not something that has to do with who has got and who has not.

A mediocre Shakespeare collection. Not comprehensively stuffed with annotations and commentary like the Arden series nor light and easy to transport like the Folger collection. Even compared to other Shakespeare 'complete works' volumes, its cover is cheaply made and the preliminary essay is saccharine and factually inaccurate. But, Shakespeare's writing can elevate even the most poorly made of publications

Edward III

For anyone saying, "Huh?" right now, let me say that EIII is one of the "Apocryphal Plays" that have been credited wholly or in part to Shakespeare at one time or another but that do not have conclusive proof of authorship by Big Bill Rattlepike. In the Second Edition of the Oxford Shakespeare Complete Works, the whole text of all plays the editors are convinced Shakespeare had a hand in is printed. This means that they have made the brave decision to include Edward III, convinced as they are that Shakepeare wrote up to four scenes in the play. The text has undergone every stylistic and vocubulary test known to scholarship and there is a growing consensus that Shakespeare wrote some, at least, of this play. Now, I don't know show more anything about these tests, but if you'd asked me which scenes stood out as the best, I'd have picked the four that the present editors claim were by Big Bill the Bard.

The play is a straightforward history, showing Edward the III first having trouble with the Scots then invading France, where his son gets caught, massively outnumbered, in a valley surrounded by hills...Cue ridiculous triumph-against-the-odds...

Between the two are some scenes where the King meets an exceptionally attractive member of the Nobility and woos her, despite being already married himself. These scenes raise the bar in terms of the language used and feeling expressed and are reminiscent of numerous similar scenes by Shakespeare - I could easily believe he wrote them. Later, the Prince of Wales, pensive before apparently insurmountable odds of battle, finds courage whilst meditating on the inevitability of death. Once again these passages are reminiscent of other famous Shakespeare scenes.

The plot is reminiscent of Henry V and I can easily imagine that Shakespeare took this play and used it as the model for that later, greater and entirely solo effort.

What Edward III lacks are depth of characterisation, depth of feeling conveyed by the language (outside the four scenes mentioned above) and a unity in the whole. The early part with Edward's attempted adultery seems disconnected from the subsequent invasion of France.

Even taken alone, Henry V eliminates all these problems.

This play illustrates to me the genius of Shakespeare: he was able to take a populist form that demanded a continuous supply of fresh material that allowed little time for rehearsal and create work that showed such psychological and dramatic insight in such glorious language that it transcended his era to the extent of him being widely considered the best Britsh playwright ever to have lived, 400 years later.

The Merchant of Venice

Well that was - short! Also, fun. It's a mess of a play in some respects - the plotting and structure are a muddle. The dramatic crisis occurs in act 4, leaving the entire last act over to the kind of banter and romantical silliness typified by As You Like It's forest scenes, which could feel anti-climactic if not played up to the hilt in performance, because when it come down to it,this play is dominated by Shylock. So much so that it ended up also popularly known by the alternative title The Jew of Venice and, in an era when actors dominated performance decisions, frequently curtailed at the end of act 4 when Shylock's part is over and the dramatic crisis is resolved.

This seems typical of the comedies, where much of the plot is an excuse to get a bunch of people into romantic shenanigans and the women into disguise as men, with little of the concern for pace or structure that we tend to demand of an genre of film these days. It's not that he couldn't do it - Richard III and Hamlet, even if bloated in places, certainly show how to organise things and Henry V doesn't even have much excess verbiage. MacBeth (aided no doubt by Middleton's many interventions) is superbly constructed and never slow - hence I conclude that Shakespeare was all about the laughs in his early comedies and never mind the preposterousness or the plots that go away for three acts.

There is no escaping the fact that Shylock dominates this play; his character is the only one developed to any real depth and the fact that the debate rages to this day as to whether Shakespeare and his contemporary audiences would have seen him as sympathetic or merely a pantomime villain testifies to this. Because a case can be made either way, villain or victim it seems plain to me that what we have is a sympathetic antagonist - not a monster everybody loves to hate but a human whose flaws in the end bring his own downfall in the very definition of Shakespearean Tragedy. He's abused and railed against for doing what Christians won't whilst at the same time being patronised by the very same people because he is fulfilling an essential function in a market economy and earning a living from it. When the opportunity arises he must have revenge, not the moral high ground of magnanimity and mercy - there-in lies the seed of his destruction.

It's hard not to compare this with Jonson, given that they were contemporaries and I recently finished a five play volume by one of the men said to have drunk Shakespeare into the fever that killed him. The contrasts are in fact stronger - Jonson being more prosaic, less witty in banter and more prone to showing off his learning, especially by quoting Latin and more concerned with "ordinary" folk than the rich and powerful. Shakespeare here also shows his mastery of character (if only in the form of Shylock) whilst the best of Jonson is much more in the way of caricature.

The Merry Wives of Windsor

This play doesn't seem to have enjoyed much popularity in my (adult) lifetime - I can't remember hearing about, let alone actually seeing, any film or stage production of it - and I can't understand why. It's ripe with opportunities for visual humour, has everybody's favourite character from Henry IV, much wit and punning, a more coherent plot than many another Shakespeare comedy and even offers wide scope to set and costume designers. I'd love to see this, filmed, or, even better, live on stage.

For those not in the know, the play revolves around an episode from John Falstaff's life prior to his association with Prince Hal, in which he attempts to cuckold his neighbours. There is a subplot regarding who will marry one Anne Page, from three suitors, leading to a typically Shakespearean ending with (implied) happy marriage.

In one sense this is a-typical Shakespeare - despite ostensibly being historical - set in the reign of Henry IV - it could, if you changed the characters' names, not be identified as anything other than contemporary with the author. It also deals not with the high-born and rich but with professionals and labourers - and rogues and thieves - making it very Jonsonian.

Julius Caesar

My first exposure to Shakespeare was this play, read in English class, when I was 13. Apparently it is a very popular choice in schools because it has no "bawdy." This wasn't any concern of my teacher, though, as he had us reading MacBeth later the same year.

Julius Caesar didn't go down very well; it was terribly confusing. Caesar dies half way through having done and said very little. What was that all about? The only bit that I remember liking was Antony's great rhetorical swaying of the plebians. The way he achieved that was fascinating.

My second encounter with the play was an outdoor performance in the courtyard of Conwy Castle, my main memory of which was having a sore bum because of inadequate cushioning from the courtyard floor (sat as I was on a couple of camping mats placed directly on the flagstones). So not much joy there either. And the whole structure was still confusing - it isn't about Julius! This fact was never explained by my teacher. But there is an explanation: the play is based on Classical dramatic models where-in this type of thing happens quite often. The central figure of the title is an enigma around which the real action revolves - the motive force for chaos and tragedy more by other people's responses to him than by his direct actions. And that's what we have here. Shakespeare writing a play after the fashion of the Latin dramatists he was familiar with from school, who in turn were following the fashion and subject matter of the Greek plays of antiquity.

Now, having learned this and also having come into contact with some of that ancient drama, I re-read Julius Caesar and find that it does in fact make sense, structurally if looked at this way. There is no central character except Caesar, despite him being conspicuous by his absence. There have been attempts to re-cast (and re-name) it as the Tragedy of Brutus but these are distortions or adaptations. The fact is that Cassius, Antony and Brutus are all compared and contrasted with each other and with Caesar and this is a necessary thing for understanding the character of each. Cassius's worldly motivations and ready perception of character are the opposite of Brutus's lofty ideals and inability to recognise that he is being used. Antony is motivated as much by will to power as by revenge; Cassius is aware of this. Brutus is a fool politically but is the superior general it turns out; they ould have won if Cassius had been more careful on the battlefield and Caesar - he's a greater figure than all of them put together, though he's just a man, with human frailties as Cassius points out, remembering how he saved Caesar from drowning in the Tiber. Greater - but for reasons not clear, not ever expressed - and the eye of the storm.

It's a fascinating mess and everybody ends up dead except Antony who walks off with the power and all the best lines in the play, back in that crucial "Friends, Romans, countrymen..." scene that forms the bulk of Act 3. The bit I liked even when I didn't have a clue about the rest - still the best part, even with the rest suddenly making sense.

Troilus and Cressida

The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare mentions that early 19th Century critics were "baffled" by this play. I have some sympathy with them; I don't really know what Bill was trying to do with this one. No contemporary writer worth the name would plot the final two acts this way, for a start. Now plotting was never Bill's strongest suit but we aren't talking about one of his daft comedies where you can ignore plot development in exchange for extreme verbal and physical comedy down in the woods tonight and go home chuckling at what you've seen and heard and not really caring about the absurdity of it all. Nor is this Romeo and Juliet 2.0, despite the set up in the first three acts where we start with a lot of wit and word play and silliness but get progressively more serious as time goes on, ending up with a full-on Tragic denouement and a bold statement about the destructive nature of feuding and partisan violence within respectable society that is alarmingly relevant 400 years later. Here, if there is a Tragic figure at all it is Hector, sadly too naively trusting in others' honour because his own is impeccable, rather than Troilus or Cressida, let alone both. And the play, despite having two endings, never really resolves the issue of the Troilus-Cressida-Diomedes love triangle at all. It's a mess.

Apparently more recent criticism has focused on Shakespeare's treatment of sexuality in the play but I don't really find the idea that people can be fickle and inconstant and driven by other people's looks all that profound or interesting, though I find it believable that Bill might have been aiming at a discussion of it.

So what I'm left with is a play that starts humourous then becomes amusingly chaotic and diverting in the final act (alarums and excursions abound) but stops rather than really concludes and suffers horribly in comparison with the Iliad's treatment of all the characters they have in common - a comparison that, at least while reading off the page, is unavoidable to anyone who has previously encountered Achilles' rage as described by Homer.

And on we go to Sir Thomas More, a play for which Shakespeare wrote probably only one or two scenes.

The Book of Sir Thomas More

The editors believe Shakespeare wrote a three page passage in the extant "book" of this play, which was originally composed by Munday. Those pages were included in the 1st Ed. of this volume but, as with Edward III, here in the 2nd Ed. they print the full text of the play. The parts attributed to Shakespeare are higher quality than the rest but some of the material by Munday is almost as good. However, for me the real interests of this play, which overall is disjointed, unbalanced and a second rate work of the period, are twofold and not really related to Shakespeare directly, namely, the portrayal of More and the insight into the politics, censorship and mode of operation of playwrights of the period.

What we have is a playbook originally written by Munday dealing with the rise and fall of Thomas More, which was heavily criticised by the Master of the Revels who read all plays before performance and had the power to demand any alterations he deemed fit or suppress the play entirely. More was a controvercial figure in Elizabethan politics still, being considered a Catholic martyr by many and a champion of the working people to boot. Catholicism vs. Protestantism was inextricably mixed up with the right to the throne and international power politics. Nevertheless, the Master of the Revels didn't ban the play out-right but instead gave copious instructions for deletions and modifications that were written directly on the play-book.

Subsequently various authors, including Chettle, Heywood and Dekker as well as Shakespeare, revised the play, replacing passages and altering existing ones - it's a professional critic's wet dream. The demand for original material for the stage was difficult to keep up with and collaborations between playwrights were commonplace, as were revisions of extant plays. (Middleton appears to have revised two of Shakespeare's plays, for example.) Here we get a good look at an extreme example of attempting to rescue a play because writing a new one from scratch was too long a process, as well as an insight into the role and attitudes of the Master of the Revels, which clearly was considered politically important and taken seriously. Despite all of the effort by nearly everyone, it seems the play was never performed on the contemporary stage.

Which brings me to the character of More himself. Here he comes over as a trickster and humourist who uses pranks to teach more pompous folks and genuine fools various lessons but also a champion of mercy and restraint in keeping the peace between the lower classes and the aristocracy. He goes in humble and brave fashion to his martyrdom, refusing to break with his Catholic principles regarding Henry VIII's divorce.

In [b:A Man for All Seasons|403098|A Man for All Seasons|Robert Bolt|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1403168082s/403098.jpg|1358325] More is presented as a much more serious but still saintly martyr who dies for his principles. A biography of William Tyndale that I once read, gives a different picture, by illustrating what some of those principles were: More had a network of agents who spied and informed on anybody connected with translating the Bible from Latin to English or printing or distributing such. Anybody found guilty of said "crimes" were burned alive at the stake - no mercy whatsoever.

All of these authors had a partisan agenda regarding More: Catholic martyr, champion of the unprivileged, murderer of anybody who opposed the Church's control of Christian thought. Could he have been all of these things?

Measure for Measure

The editors believe that this play was adapted somewhat by another writer and additionally that it was Thomas Middleton. The same view is widely held regarding MacBeth, which to my mind loses it's unity of view and expression in the scenes of the witches spell casting and giving cauldrons a bad reputation forever after. Here, though, any adaptation is more subtle and doesn't impair the play at all.

This is also the earliest of what are known as the "problem plays" so called, as far as I can tell, because they do not fit neatly into any of the three conventional genres of the time, namely, comedy, tragedy or history. Earliest problem play does not mean early play, however - we are in the second half of Shakespeare's career by now. This leads me to propose a simple solution to the "problem": By this time Shakespeare was successful and confident enough to dispense with convention and write whatever kind of play he wanted and it seems to me that this is a morality play.

This play attacks everything that was appalling about the status of and attitudes towards women of the period, making it a stark contrast with The Taming of the Shrew. The law that the plot hinges upon is an ass, along with the prevailing obsession with virginity prior to marriage and as some kind of morally pure state that gets you extra bonus points from the Heavenly authorities. The convention of dowries and concomitant "wife as chattel" is also attacked.

There are no really memorable speeches but the play gets its points across successfully and doesn't outstay its welcome.

Henry V
Yeah, yeah, I'm supposed to be reading King Lear, but the BBC broadcast Brannagh's Henry V film and I thought I'd catch it on iPlayer before it disappears. Go here for the review because there isn't room left here for it all:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1607567661

King Lear (Quarto)
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1611844950

The Tragedy of Richard III
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1645516749?book_show_action=false

Timon of Athens
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1658506897

MacBeth
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1861681303?book_show_action=false&from...

All's Well that Ends Well
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1913011208

Pericles
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1957354103?book_show_action=false

Coriolanus
Fierce warrior, great general, total prat.

The Winter's Tale
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2098317566?book_show_action=false

Cymbeline
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2174784590

The Two Noble Kinsmen
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2279366447 show less