Introduction

A quick intro for you.  Circumstances recently have convinced me that it’s time to experience more Shakespeare.  I’m pretty much just interested in the plays and not the poetry, so I’m seeking to read, watch or listen to each and every one of them.  And, of course, I’m blogging about it because it’s 2011 and this is the internet.

Here’s the official list from Wikipedia.  I've annotated it to give us a starting point:

Comedies

• All's Well That Ends Well  -  No knowledge
• As You Like It  -  No knowledge
• The Comedy of Errors  -  Performed in as Antipholus of Syracuse.
• Love's Labour's Lost  -  No knowledge
• Measure for Measure  -  No knowledge
• The Merchant of Venice  -  Saw a performance at Stratford, Ontario.  So good.
• The Merry Wives of Windsor  -  No knowledge
• A Midsummer Night's Dream  -  No knowledge
• Much Ado About Nothing  -  Have seen the movie.  Yeah, with Keanu Reeves.
• Pericles, Prince of Tyre  -  Never even heard of it!
• The Taming of the Shrew  -  I’m pretty sure I watched a movie in class, but will have to revisit.
• The Tempest  -  No knowledge
• Twelfth Night  -  Perfomed in as “Officer”.
• The Two Gentlemen of Verona  -  No knowledge
• The Two Noble Kinsmen  -  No knowledge
• The Winter's Tale  -  Never even heard of it!

Histories  -  Lets make this easy.  I’ve no knowledge of any of the histories except I watched Looking for Richard

• King John
• Richard II
• Henry IV, Part 1
• Henry IV, Part 2
• Henry V
• Henry VI, Part 1
• Henry VI, Part 2
• Henry VI, Part 3
• Richard III
• Henry VIII

Tragedies

• Romeo and Juliet  -  Saw the Baz Luhrmann movie.  Yeah, I know.
• Coriolanus  -  Never heard of it
• Titus Andronicus  -  No knowledge
• Timon of Athens  -  Never heard of it
• Julius Caesar  -  Listened to an audiorecording in class.  Need to revisit.
• Macbeth  -  Read
• Hamlet  -  No knowledge, aside from knowing half of the play as figures of speech.
• Troilus and Cressida  -  No knowledge
• King Lear  -  Saw a performance at Stratford Ontario.  The great William Hutt was Lear.
• Othello  -  Read and watched the movie.  Yeah, the one with Lawrence Fishburn.
• Antony and Cleopatra  -  No knowledge
• Cymbeline  -  Never heard of it

So that’s where I am going into this.  I’m actually a bit into the project, but this is an “as of the beginning” post, so I’ll catch up as I go.  There’s a lot of work to do, 30 plays.  Yikes!

This post is pretty much an infodump.  I'll try to get a bit more interesting next time.  Feel free to ignore or use as reference point or whatever.