It occurred to me that, as well-read as I'm becoming in English literature, my knowledge of Shakespeare has always been woefully deficient. Having only covered The Merchant of Venice, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and A Midsummer Night's Dream in education, there were far too many I'd missed out on. It always felt that Shakespeare was a school text, to be studied but not read for personal entertainment. Coming to Shakespeare on my own terms, without a teacher breathing down my neck and telling me how to interpret it, has been an uplifting experience.
I started the journey with one of his most famous plays, Hamlet. Whilst being informed of the plot through popular culture, I'd never actually watched it performed. The play was thoroughly entertaining, full of instantly recognisable plot points and immortal quotations. I was amazed by how many of them resided in this play alone. I capped off the read by watching what I consider the quintessential adaptation - the Kenneth Brannagh film.
Next up was Othello, one of my sister's favourites. My raw reaction to the play was that I hated Othello and loved Iago. With all the academic noise about racism, I was not expecting Othello to be quite so gullible, unlikeable, and villianous. Desdemona's father was right all along. I also finished this read with a Kenneth Brannagh film version from the 90s. So far, so good, now onto King Lear.
I expected to love King Lear, I ended up only liking it. All the elements of a good tragedy are present - scheming characters, Sturm und Drang, violence and wanton wickedness. But it's also one of his more chaotic plays. Characters scream and bellow into the wind, are stripped naked, have their eyes gouged out. However, it seemed messy, confusing, and dare I say - contrived? I wanted more 'Game of Thrones' and less Jeremy Kyle. "I've got these dor-tuhz yeah?" I must say, the film adaptations for Lear were horrendous. The only one I stuck with was the 2018 Hopkins version, and I despised the modern setting.
I ended with a re-read of the Scottish play, and it remains my favourite by far, only appreciating it more with each exposure. It's as heavy and unsettling as ever. Last night I woke up covered in sweat from night terrors, muttering "Thane of Cawdor" over and over before I came to. The play is also far shorter than I remember, it being a highly compact performance with all the subplots stripped out. Granted, this probably wasn't the only version knocking around. The haunting tale of bloody ambition and doomed prophecy has some of the most exquistively constructed lines in the history of literature, and remains emminently quotable. I ended with a rewatch of the best film adaptation - Roman Polanski's.
It's difficult to give an overall rating for a volume that contains books of differing quality, but when it comes to Shakespeare, his tragedies are all fantastic in their own right. In an unprecedented first, I have awarded two concurrent five star ratings. I have only one negative point to make, and it pertains to the academic footnotes, introductions, and format of this volume. Although a nice looking Penguin clothbound edition, the clowns who wrote the academic fluff have ruined it. Many of their footnotes are hairbrained observations, pointing out the extremely obvious and compressing Shakespeare's actual verse into only half the page. This made the book much thicker and heavier to carry than it had to be. Their introductions were an absolute bore to read.
Rating: 5/5
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