Brush Up Your Shakespeare...
By: Peter Huntley Sep. 16, 2009
Let's get one thing straight. I love Shakespeare. I've loved the Bard since watching the BBC's Shakespeare: The Animated Tales. But I didn't experience a live Shakespeare until I was the ripe old age of 15 when Des Barritt gave the RSC his Bottom in 1995. In that magical Dream fluffy fairies rolled around, bower-like-umbrellas dropped in from the fly tower and I, on a school trip to Stratford-Upon-Avon, left entranced.
Fourteen years later, I've seen or read nineteen of the canon and that doesn't seem like I'm taking the Bard seriously: I mean, really, I know all of Stephen Sondheim's works, so why not our very own master? I spend half my life in a theatre or in a museum dedicated to theatre so surely I should be making more of an effort.
In my new series I'm going to attempt to see, or at least read, the remainder of the 37 plays. I've got some of the most famous plays in literature to look forward to (and King John) and nine months to do it in. Yes, I'm giving myself a time limit, I'm going to have experienced all of Shakespeare by the time I'm thirty or die trying. I'm going to write about my experiences here and I'll be brutally honest!
So if you are in a production of Pericles or Henry VIII let us know and you could be part of my literary awakening. The list is below, so get your thinking caps on.
* seen
# read
All's Well That Ends Well (1602) *
Antony and Cleopatra (1606) #
As You Like It (1599)
Comedy of Errors (1589) *
Coriolanus (1607) #
Cymbeline (1609)
Hamlet (1600) #*
Henry IV, Part I (1597)
Henry IV, Part II (1597)
Henry V (1598)
Henry VI, Part I (1591)
Henry VI, Part II (1590)
Henry VI, Part III (1590)
Henry VIII (1612)
Julius Caesar (1599) #
King John (1596)
King Lear (1605)
Love's Labour's Lost (1594)
Macbeth (1605) #*
Measure for Measure (1604) #
Merchant of Venice (1596) *#
Merry Wives of Windsor (1600)
Midsummer Night's Dream (1595) *
Much Ado about Nothing (1598)
Othello (1604) *#
Pericles (1608)
Richard II (1595)
Richard III (1592) #
Romeo and Juliet (1594) #*
Taming of the Shrew (1593)
Tempest (1611) *#
Timon of Athens (1607) *#
Titus Andronicus (1593)#
Troilus and Cressida (1601) #
Twelfth Night (1599) #
Two Gentlemen of Verona (1594)
The Two Noble Kinsmen (?)
Winter's Tale (1610)
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