Reading Shakespeare
Several years ago, I purchased the Oxford Complete Shakespeare and placed it on my shelf. It stared at me more and more intensely, particularly during the confinement period in the spring of 2020. In a moment of existential angst, I finally gave in to its guilty looks and began reading each of the plays as well as a wealth of criticism and commentary on Shakespeare and was more than healthily rewarded for the effort.
One of the first barriers to entry for someone reading Shakespeare is the archaic language he uses. Most modern versions use emendated texts with modern spelling, but in order to preserve the iambic meter (da-Da-da-Da-da-Da-da-Da-da-Da) in most of the lines of blank verse, some conventions that the Bard used such as the “èd” at the end of verbs is kept. Admittedly, it gets some getting used to the syntax as well, but I found that after struggling through the first few plays, I found my reading rhythm and was less disturbed by the difficult grammar.
When reading Shakespeare, given the wide variety of genres and themes that he deals with, it is difficult to know where to start. I decided to begin with a chronological approach, but when I hit the 8-play history series (well, nine plays if you count the recently attributed and enjoyable Edward III) that covers Hundred Year’s War and the War of the Roses, I decided to read them in historical order and supplement this reading with Shakespeare’s Kings by John Julius Norwich. It was a good plan and a lot of fun. I would also highly recommend watching The Hollow Crown, a BBC adaptation in two series from 2012 and 2016 which covers these plays nearly line-by-line. Also, the classic Laurence Olivier versions of Richard III and Henry V as well as Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V and Richard Loncraine’s Richard III starring Ian McKellan as a particularly terrifying Richard III.
There are so many layers to Shakespeare, that it is hard as a writer to set it all down on paper. There is the action as it appears to the characters in the play whether it be a comedy, a tragedy, a romance, or an adaptation of history. Then, there is what the play was saying to Elizabethan (before Elizabeth I’s death in 1603) and Jacobean audiences (under James I until Shakespeare’s sudden retirement in 1613 and his death in 1616) because there was always a contemporary message more or less evident in the texts. Lastly, there is what the plays say to us today about ourselves, about human excellence and depravity, about good and evil. When reading Shakespeare, it is helpful to have a few guides to help one along the journey to see the clues to these various strata in the Bard’s works.
In terms of critics, I limited myself primarily to 20th and 21st century writing about Shakespeare. I, unfortunately, did not major in English, but I induce from my reading that the views on Shakespeare radically changed in the last century as a result of the sea changes that society was undergoing: the industrial revolution, social revolutions, more European wars, and the advent of psychoanalysis. My understanding is that Oxford Laureat A.C. Bradley in his Shakespearean Tragedy from 1904 changed literary criticism by using a more intertextual analysis of the four major tragedies to derive insights into the deeper psychology of Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth. Delivered in a series of lectures, it is an incredibly exciting and insightful read.
G. Wilson Knight wrote a series of books including the famous Wheel of Fire (1931) of “interpretive criticism” (his term) in which, admitting his debt to Bradley, he explored the mythology of Shakespeare and is equally fascinating in his insights, particularly his reading of lesser known plays such as Timon of Athens. He does an excellent job of comparing the plays by plumbing their deeper meanings through character analysis and the common themes and symbols used in the plays (storms, animals, death, hate, etc).
M.W. MacCallum’s book Shakespeare’s Roman Plays was incredibly helpful for Julius Caesar, Anthony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus to understand how Shakespeare got these stories as they had just recently been translated from Plutarch’s Lives. Actually, Shakespeare also used Plutarch for Timon of Athens as well, but this is not covered by MacCallum. Instead, he dives deep into the three plays I mentioned to show how Shakespeare built his epic characters Brutus, Cassius, Marc Anthony, Cleopatra, and Coriolanus. It is a very good introduction to this often overlooked aspect of Shakespeare.
For the comedies, I read the rather academic R.P. Draper’s Shakespeare: The Comedies and found it interesting, but perhaps a bit too abstract. On the contrary, Hugh Richmond’s Shakespeare’s Sexual Comedy: A Mirror For Lovers was excellent and extremely insightful and a delightful read.
For the later romances, Northrop Frye’s A Natural Perspective is a classic and a must read. It looks at Pericles, Cymbeline, A Winter’s Tale, and The Tempest showing how Shakespeare’s vision had matured at this point and how central a role nature plays in these late works.
Besides Norwich’s Shakespeare’s Kings and MacCallum’s Shakespeare’s Roman Plays, I also read the recent Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics by Stephen Greenblatt. It was a vitriolic study of the various tyrants in the history plays and tragedies with a not so subtle warning about current politics and the virage in today’s world towards authoritarianism. It serves as further proof as to what I said earlier about Shakespeare’s relevance regardless of which time period he is read.
As for the plays themselves, I reviewed most of them on Goodreads and will add a list here connecting to those reviews. In the meantime, my favorites in order:
The Tempest (Miranda!)Hamlet (Ophelia!)As You Like It (totally in love with Rosalind!)Macbeth (Lady Macbeth!)King Lear (Cordelia)Midsummer Night’s Dream (Helena)Richard IIIAntony and CleopatraRichard II Henry VOthelloA Winter’s TaleJulius CaesarPericlesMuch Ado About NothingTwelfth NightThe Taming of the ShrewRomeo and Juliet1 Henry IV2 Henry IV3 Henry IVTwo Gentleman of VeronaThe Merchant of VeniceMeasure for MeasureAll’s Well That Ends WellCoriolanusCymbellineTroilus and CressidaTimon of AthensEdward III1 Henry IV2 Henry IVThe Merry Wives of WindsorTitus AndronicusLove’s Labor LostKing JohnHenry VIIITwo Noble Kinsman
