Lynda's list

Hi
Thanks for inviting me to join this challenge.

My list is as follows:
1 Roman Shakespeare: Warriors, Wounds and Women (Feminist Readings of Shakespeare) by Coppelia Kahn
2 Shakespeare's Wife by Germaine Greer
3 Shakespeare Revealed: A Biography by Rene Weis
4 Shakespeare and Renaissance Politics (Arden Critical Companion) by Andrew Hadfield
5Shakespeare's English Kings: History, Chronicle and Drama by Peter Saccio
6 Shadowplay: The Hidden Beliefs and Coded Politics of William Shakespeare by Clare Asquith

I also intend to read:
7 Henry IV, Part 1
8 Henry IV, Part 2
9 Henry V
10 Henry VI, Part 1
11 Henry VI, Part 2
12 Henry VI, Part 3

What a great site, Historia! Thanks for hosting such a fun challenge!

This is what I had in mind for this challenge - to read 12 plays by the bard as follows:

January, 2009 - The Tempest
February, 2009 - Two Gentlemen of Verona
March, 2009 - Merry Wives of Windsor
April, 2009 - Twelfth Night
May, 2009 - Measure for Measure
June, 2009 - Much Ado About Nothing
July, 2009 - A Midsummer Night's Dream
August, 2009 - Love's Labour's Lost
September, 2009 - The Merchant of Venice
October, 2009 - As You Like It
November, 2009 - All's Well That Ends Well
December, 2009 - The Taming of the Shrew

Jan (in Edmonds) http://jottingsfromjan.blogspot.com

Books I want to read for the 2009 Challenge

I was not able to complete the 2008 Shakespeare challenge. So I will be trying to read these books next year for the 2009 Challenge.

Shakespeare's Face - by Stephanie Nolen
Shakespeare & Co - by Stanley Wells
Alias Shakespeare - by John Sobran
History Play - by Rodney Bolt
A Year in the life of William Shakespeare - by James Shapiro
Shakespeare by Another Name - by Mark Anderson
Shakespeare the Biography - by Peter Ackroyd
The Great Shakespeare Fraud - by Patricia Pearce

What is the Reduced Shakespeare Company

4 minutes
Thanks to Shakespeare Geek for this clip.

Shakespeare Challenges ends today.

Today is the last day of the Shakespeare Challenge. Thank you all for joining and participating.

I personally did not finish my challenge. I had too many other things happening in my life, and probably too many other challenges as well. But I am glad that others made better progress than I did. If there is any interest, I might run this again next year, but we will see.

I have picked up a few more books on Shakespeare.
One is called Alias Shakespeare by John Sobran, who seems to support the theory that Edward de Vere (Oxford) was the true author of the sonnets and plays.
Another is Shakespeare the Biography by Peter Ackroyd.

William Shakespeare's Sonnets

When I started this, I began to note the sonnets I really liked, but stopped in the 70s because I realized I liked almost all of them and the list was too long. While I can not relate to the emotions of some of them, there are many variations in this book. There are themes of not just love but of time, change, politics, desire, death, and much more. I found the theme of time and change to the be the most interesting. Maybe it's because I am a romantic, but the poetry worked for me on a lot of levels. These are words to be read aloud, as is usually the case for poetry. I was enchanted and moved. I have always liked Shakespeare, but I think this may be one of the works I love most from him. I did wonder a lot about Shakespeare the man when reading this. I am not so overwrought with questions about the identity, but I wonder his exact mind when he wrote this. Were they for someone? When did he write this? In any case, I am glad we have these beautiful words left. I would very much love to own a copy of these sonnets to cherish and read over and over again. Classic.

Shakespeare: The World as Stage

Shakespeare: The World as Stage
by Bill Bryson

I listened to this book on CD during a recent trip. It is a short history of Shakespeare and his times read by the author. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Mr. Bryson is honest right from the beginning. He shares that he wrote this biography not because the world needed another book about Shakespeare but because it is part of a series. He states up front that there is a great deal we don't know about the Bard and his time in history. His work is for the lay scholar, the person like myself who wants to know about Shakespeare and his times but doesn't want to spend a lifetime in study. I don't need to know all the authorship debate or what in his life influenced him to write which play when. I want more than a morsel but not a college level class. This book fit my needs perfectly.

Bryson appears to have done a good deal of work. He lays out some of the main thoughts about certain areas, like the order the plays are believed to have been written in (no two scholars agree), then reminds the reader (or listener) about the lack of evidence to support any viewpoint. When he has an opinion to share he follows it with a brief explanation. The final chapter that deals with the authorship debate and where it stems from was interesting and I tend to agree with him. Why challenge Shakespeare as the author when there is no substantial evidence for or against and the circumstantial evidence is stronger for his being the author than for anyone else, especially when you consider where the challenge stemmed from?

I'm glad I listened to this one. I can recommend it happily.