Skip to main content

My Shakesyear

We all have those books, novels, and plays that we wish we could read if only we had the time. While the idea of finally reading Don Quixote, War and Peace, or the Iliad sounds so enticing, life inevitably gets in the way and as the years go on it gets less and less likely that you are ever going to tackle these behemoths of literature. This is how I left for a long time and a couple of years ago I decided to do something about it.

Each year I would challenge myself to read one difficult book. At the beginning of January, I would decide what it would be and from then I had until December 31st to complete it. This method saw me finally tick books off my reading list that without it would have remained there for the rest of my life. Books that you know will be great, and informative, and you will remember forever, but somehow the motivation to start them is never there.

In 2017, it was Moby-Dick by Herman Melville, a novel that has so much to teach us about what it means to be alive. In 2018, it was Ulysses by James Joyce, a book so daunting and strange but also incredibly funny and playful. Then in 2019, I decided to tackle David Foster Wallace’s magnum opus Infinite Jest, which runs at over 1000 pages and requires at least three bookmarks at any given time to keep track of the story. But knowing I had the full year to complete them meant it was not so unnerving and I was able to fully take in and enjoy what these books had to offer.

Then comes 2020, the year of the pandemic. Suddenly, “I wish I could read more but I just don’t have the time” was no longer a viable excuse and I decided to up the ante. It was time to attempt something I knew I always wanted to do, and that was to finally get to grips with the man himself, the Bard of Avon, William Shakespeare. I was going to read everything. That is 39 plays over 52 weeks. Less than one a week and when it is framed like that, it actually feels achievable, and I already had a head start as I’d read Romeo and Juliet as well as Hamlet in secondary school.

I decided to read in chronological order because I knew if I read the most famous ones first then I’d quickly run out of steam for the less well-known plays. I read them on my kindle while listening to an audiobook of the plays being performed. This made keeping track of the characters easier, and this method meant it was usually possible to read an entire play in an afternoon.


Let me tell you, what a journey it was. I learned so much that I never knew before, and by the end I was picking up on Shakespearian references in music, films, and TV shows that had previously gone right over my head. Reading Titus Andronicus, a particularly graphic Shakespearian revenge tragedy, I realised that the plot was identical to an episode of South Park. Reading the Taming of the Shrew and seeing how it stacked up against its teen romance adaptation 10 Things I Hate About You was a blast.

When looking at Shakespeare’s entire body of work as one you start to realise why he was so popular at the time. With his romance plays he set the scene for what would eventually become romcom. The appeal of his histories can be seen more prominently in the success of shows like The Crown or even Games of Thrones. His tragedies are of course the most famous and with good reason, the expert portrayal of the deepest issues of humanity will always be timeless.

I know for some people the idea of Shakespeare may seem a little old and stuffy, something which only serves to give you horrific flashbacks to the leaving cert. But without the fear of being tested, without being required to memorise long passages or soliloquies, without anyone forcing me to read these plays, and instead doing it of my own volition, I was able to enjoy them on my own terms. I was able to take in and appreciate the beauty and guidance these old plays have to offer. It took all year to finish the challenge, and I must admit I squeezed the final play The Two Noble Kingsmen into the last week of December. It had its ups and downs, and some plays were much better than others, but it felt worthwhile.

[This article was originally published in SIN issue 10]

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

David Bowie (1967)

  The Bowie Project #1 – David Bowie (1967) Click here to listen to an audio version of this review on Spotify The David Bowie we find on his 1967 debut album is not quite the Bowie so many would later come to know and love. The pieces are there, the ambition, the creativity, the lyricism but it never quite manages to come together as a cohesive whole. There’s a strange mix of genres on display here, ranging from baroque to music hall to psychedelic rock with Bowie himself stating that the album “seemed to have its roots all over the place, in rock and vaudeville and music hall. I didn't know if I was Max Miller or Elvis Presley ". But in a way, that’s part of its charm. Bowie is finding his feet and personally I find that rather enjoyable. It’s nice to know that his artistic vision didn’t arrive fully formed, that there was a couple of false starts before the real good stuff, that even if we’re not fully satisfied with the things we create, we can go back to the drawing ...
Post a Comment
Read more

David Bowie (1969)

The Bowie Project #2 - David Bowie aka Space Oddity aka Man of Words/Man of Music (1969) Click here to listen to an audio version of this review on Spotify Many call this the first true David Bowie album. After the commercial failure of his first record two years earlier (also called David Bowie ), the future Ziggy Stardust sought to reinvent himself and shed his jaunty music hall vaudeville past, and what better way to erase everyone’s memory of the first album than by giving the next one the exact same name? The origins of this album begin with the promotional movie Love You till Tuesday   which Kenneth Pitt, Bowie’s new manager, hoped would showcase his talents and introduce him to a larger audience. The film ended up being shelved and was not released until 1984 when it finally appeared on VHS. The half-hour promo was originally planned to include seven previously released Bowie songs and one mime performance, but before shooting began Bowie wrote a new song for the fi...
Post a Comment
Read more

Blackstar ★ (2016)

  The Bowie Project #31 - Blackstar (2016) After an intensive career that saw incredibly highs and desperate lows, going from an alternative cult act to stadium superstar, through ambient dreamscape and drum and bass freakouts. You can call him Major Tom, Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, Halloween Jack, Thin White Duke, the Man Who Fell to Earth just to name a few. His career is one of the most long lasting, influential, and interesting in the entire music industry. When taken as a whole the work that he did adds up to a complete body of work that was consistently pushing the boundaries and daring to push pop culture past the point of what was considered appropriate or acceptable. This kid who was born in Brixton just two years after the end of World War II grew up with an innate need for success, a drive that saw him become on of the most recognizable figures on the planet, and a sense of showmanship and theatrically that would bleed through right up until the moment of his death. Da...
Post a Comment
Read more