Nullifidian > Recent Status Updates

Finished King Lear. What a magnificent, heartbreaking play. Now up to Antony and Cleopatra.

Finished A Trick to Catch the Old One by Thomas Middleton, which was absolutely hilarious and delightful. I love Middleton's comedies. Now up to The Changeling by Middleton and William Rowley, after which I'll read Rowley's The Birth of Merlin in The Shakespeare Apocrypha. Then there will be only three more plays until the end of this book.

Finished Fair Em, the Miller's Daughter of Manchester, which was really a nothing play. Whoever wrote it was phoning it in. The only thing I can say to praise it was that it was at least short and easy to read. I was able to read the whole thing during Act III of Die Walküre. Next up is The Birth of Merlin by William Rowley, which I'll read after The Changeling in Elizabethan Plays.

Read Macbeth, and I'll read King Lear later today. I read Macbeth slightly out-of-order because I wanted to watch a video of the late Antony Sher as Macbeth that was due to expire today.

Read the chapters on King Lear and Macbeth. Now up to the essay on Antony and Cleopatra.

Up to King Lear, my co-favorite tragedy along with Hamlet.

Up to the chapter on King Lear.

Up to A Trick to Catch the Old One by Thomas Middleton.

Up to Part 1, "Behind the Lines", chapter 13, "Švejk Administers Extreme Unction".

Up to The White Devil by John Webster, who wrote my favorite early modern play that isn't by Shakespeare, The Duchess of Malfi.

Up to The Wild-Goose Chase by John Fletcher.

About The Maid's Tragedy, I wonder what their first audience thought of the scene in the fifth act where the King awakes after having been tied up by Evadne and he thinks it's a sex game. Was BDSM practiced frequently enough for the audience to understand the implications? If it were, it's certainly an insight into the sexual mores of early modern England.

Up to The Maid's Tragedy by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher.

Up to Timon of Athens.

All's Well That Ends Well was a heartwarming play. I don't know why it's not as popular as Much Ado About Nothing and The Winter's Tale, which have the same themes of reconciliation and the 'dead' maligned lover coming back to life. I was amused to see that the "someone's cutting onions" excuse goes back to the early modern era with Lafeu's "mine eyes smell onions".

"Finished Othello and WOW is it a magnificent play, but the world already knows that. Iago is a terrific—in both senses—depiction of a sociopath.

The next play in the First Folio is All's Well That Ends Well, though I read Sir Thomas More from The Shakespeare Apocrypha edited by C. F. Tucker Brooke in between, since stylometric studies indicate that Othello is closest to "Hand D".

Up to Philaster, or Love Lies a-Bleeding by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher. And I'd just like to say that Beaumont's The Knight of the Burning Pestle is one of the greatest plays ever written. Utterly hilarious and brilliantly metatheatrical. It's no surprise that it failed when it was initially given, because a play that breaks the fourth wall in the first 30 seconds was too weird for his era.

Up to the chapter on Timon of Athens.

Finished Sir Thomas More. Fair Em remains the only "free" play to read, because I intend to read William Rowley's The Birth of Merlin after The Changeling by Thomas Middleton and Rowley in Elizabethan Plays edited by Hazelton Spencer, and because The Two Noble Kinsmen is the last play I'll read for my Shakespeare project.

Up to "The Girl Who Loved Graveyards".

Finished Othello and WOW is it a magnificent play, but the world already knows that. Iago is a terrific—in both senses—depiction of a sociopath.

The next play in the First Folio is All's Well That Ends Well, but first I'll read Sir Thomas More in The Shakespeare Apocrypha. It'll be my first time reading the whole play, as all the complete works editions I've read only contained Hand D.

Up to the story "The Victim".

Up to the chapter on All's Well That Ends Well, however before I get to that play I will read Sir Thomas More from The Shakespeare Apocrypha edited by C. F. Tucker Brooke, as stylometric analysis shows that the "Hand D" section of that manuscript is closest to Othello. Right now I'm reading Othello in the First Folio and it's brilliant.

Finished Measure for Measure. Now up to Othello, and after I'll switch to The Shakespeare Apocrypha edited by C. F. Tucker Brooke for Sir Thomas More, since stylometric analysis has determined "Hand D" to be closest to Othello. After that, it will be All's Well That Ends Well, which is adapted from a story in my favorite book The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio.

Finished Troilus and Cressida, which is now one of my favorite Shakespeare plays. What a magnificent work. It's making me hopeful that I'll love the other "problem plays" just as much, and I certainly know that will be the case with the next one, Measure for Measure. I've seen it once in an excellent production and read it innumerable times.

Up to the chapter on Measure for Measure.

Up to Troilus and Cressida. Twelfth Night was delightful as always, but now I have to bid goodbye to the ha-ha funny comedies and start reading the problem plays and late romances (though the Bohemia scenes in The Winter's Tale, still sparkle with Shakespeare's gift for comedy, and Autolycus is one of Shakespeare's great comic characters).

Up to the chapter on Troilus and Cressida.

Up to Book III, entirely consisting of letters to Appius Claudius Pulcher.

Up to The Knight of the Burning Pestle by Francis Beaumont.

Up to The Honest Whore, Part Two by Thomas Dekker. Next will be the plays by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher that I've been longing to reread (The Knight of the Burning Pestle by Beaumont, Philaster and The Maid's Tragedy by Beaumont and Fletcher, and The Wild-Goose Chase by Fletcher).

Up to The Honest Whore, Part One by Thomas Dekker. The Shoemaker's Holiday was a delightful read.