There is a reason you've probably never seen a performance of Troilus and Cressida.
After my enthusiastic start last January, I never quite managed to read one play each month. Once my new job started in August, in fact, I hardly read any Shakespeare at all. Reading Shakespeare is much easier than it used to be, but it still requires concentration. It turns out that teaching graduate classes in an area outside my specialty also requires concentration, and so Shakespeare took a back seat to lecture prep for the whole of the fall semester.
I had hoped I could catch up in December since I wasn't prepping lectures, but the demands of finals plus the dreariness of the remaining plays meant that I couldn't pull it off. Bummer.
Still, I read 14.5 plays in 2011, and all but one of the poems.
| Titus Andronicus 1/5/11 | Coriolanus 12/4/11 |
| Henry VI Part I 1/10/11 |
Two Gentlemen of Verona 7/4/11 |
| Henry VI Part II 1/15/11 | King John 5/30/11 |
| Henry VI Part III 1/20/11 |
Twelfth Night 1/7/12 |
| The Winter's Tale 4/3/11 |
Measure for Measure 7/18/11 |
| Troilus & Cressida 1/1/12 |
Venus & Adonis 12/11/11 |
| All's Well That Ends Well 1/4/12 |
The Rape of Lucrece 1/6/12 |
| Richard III 1/25/11 |
The Passionate Pilgrim 12/2/11 |
| Timon of Athens 12/21/11 |
The Phoenix and the Turtle 1/30/11 |
| Pericles 1/29/11 |
A Lover's Complaint 4/17/11 |
| Cymbeline 4/11/11 |
Sonnets 5/29/2011 |
| Henry VIII 12/28/11 |
I've been saving Twelfth Night, which I've seen a couple of times but never read, for last. Perhaps I can finish Twelfth Night on Twelfth Night? After I'm finished I'd like to reread Hamlet and Othello, both of which I sped through too inattentively as a sophomore in college. I asked for and was given a copy of The Two Noble Kinsmen for Christmas -- it's not in my Complete Works -- and I think I'll tackle it this year too (she said a little wearily, hoping it's more like Macbeth (did you know Macbeth is thought to have been co-authored? Wikipedia says so and that means it must be true) than Pericles or Timon of Athens).
Boy, this is kind of a gloomy post. (This is kind of a gloomy blog lately. December/January at Light & Momentary: brought to you by Seasonal Affective Disorder.) I'll try to do a cheerier wrap-up post when I've actually wrapped up the project.
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