Update: August 16 2025 – on the home stretch now! I have only Henry VI 1-3, Richard III and Henry VIII to go – then I’ve “done the lot.” After that, a couple of contemporaneous plays (Duchess of Malfi, ‘Tis a Pity…). Then I’m doing Ovid’s Metamorphoses. At some point before the apocalypse I’d love to do a podcast series on Shakespeare’s plays, from eco-marxist perspectives. But this will probably not happen….
When I was 16/17 (centuries ago), I had to do a project for Year 12 (“Matric”) English. I forget the parameters, but I ended up doing “moral dilemmas in Shakespeare’s plays.” Mercifully for everyone, that work is now molecules in a landfill somewhere. But it meant I ended up reading a bunch of plays beyond the usual suspects. And then, about 15 years ago, I was going to read the lot. I didn’t of course, and I probably still won’t. What I WILL do, though, is – over the next half year of weekends or so, is read the 21 which I have little or no familiarity with. And blog about them. All part of that sporadically taken up and put down project “Remedial Accumulation of Cultural Capital.”
Here’s the list I am working from – of high familiarity (only Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth and Hamlet), medium, low and zero. I will start with the zeroes (as per astronaut Chris Hadfield’s advice, in a different meaning/context).
I started, for no other reason than I have the Tragedies volume of The Complete Pelican Shakespeare (purchased 20 years ago in Moss Side), with Titus Andronicus.
Uggh.
Anyway, each blog post will be done in two parts. First, I’ll give my “take” using the following pro forma, and then I will do an update after I have listened to podcasts telling me what I missed (always a lot). And if there are film adaptations that look interesting, I’ll go there too.
The blog post
The play: TITLE
Year written: 15xx 16xx
Context of the writing (shakespeare’s career, political events it was responding to): xx
Plot in a paragraph: xx
Things that worked well: xx
Things that didn’t work well: xx
Words I learnt: xx
Lines worth knowing: xx
Favourite character: xx
Marc’s entirely subjective verdict and score out of 5 bards (ymmv): xx
Will I be tracking down movies of this? : yes, no, hell no.
How far would I travel to see a good production of this? xx
Books I should read
Shakespeare Beyond the Green World: Drama and Ecopolitics in Jacobean Britain. By Todd Andrew Borlik. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023. Pp. xiv + 290. Hardcover $105.00.
marchudson.net 