The last readathon just ended for me, and now I intend to casually participate in another, starting right now through midnight tomorrow.

Cassandra at Literary Stars is hosting this one in celebration of the end of her school term. I know all about school holidays and can think of no better way to celebrate than by having a readathon – unless it’s by watching an Austen movie or visiting a Margaret Mitchell site, or engaging in a good healthy jump on a trampoline while screaming – “I’m FREE!”

This weekend I’ll be working on:

• A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
• Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
• & some of my side reads (click to see them)

I’ll update this page with a daily page count.

Stop by & join Cassandra, eh?

Times: 8am Saturday EST - Midnight Sunday EST

Running stats:
# Pages read: 333
# Books finished: 1
Time spent reading: 13 hours

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Books Finished:

• A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

Page counts:

• Saturday by midnight:

# Pages read: 333
# Books finished: 1
Time spent reading: 13 hours

• Sunday by midnight: 

Oops! Life took over, so no readathon time! One day is still progress though.

From the first chapter, I was hooked. Little Mary is a rich British girl living in India, who doesn’t know what to do with herself when her beautiful mother and her father the British captain, along with the rest of the household, die of cholera. She’s all alone, and spoiled little nine-year-old that she is, only wonders why no one is serving her. Mary has never really known love — only money and servants.

When she’s carted away to live with her uncle in England, she doesn’t know what to expect. The Yorkshire servant who tells her about him paints him as distant, cranky and unsociable. He takes her on because she’s a relative, but it doesn’t sound like he really wants her. His wife died ten years earlier, and death seems to hang all over his enormous house. There are a hundred rooms, but most of them have been locked up. There’s also a secret garden — one that has been barred from visitors. Apparently it was his wife’s garden, and no one is allowed to enter it.

Mary “Quite Contrary” of course sets out to find this garden, because being told that she is not allowed to enter it is encouragement enough for her to want nothing more than to barge upon her dead aunt’s garden and see what’s so secretive about it.

That’s as far as I’ve gotten so far.

I love the way the story explains what a Yorkshire accent sounds like. I wouldn’t have understood the problem, but the story makes clear how garbled it would sound to Mary’s ears. I feel like I’m there in the story! I’m curious to meet little Dickon, the boy who owns his own pony — who has tickled Mary’s curiosity. And I love no-nonsense Martha the maid, who thinks Mary ought to learn to dress herself.

This book definitely has me wanting to read A Little Princess. I’ve seen it on a lot of people’s TBR lists, but I never knew what it was about. There’s a description on the back of my copy of The Secret Garden, and it sounds really good.

Posts like this one made me think I’d hate it, or that it would be terribly difficult to read, but I actually find it beautiful, like staring at a piece of art. The story centers on Mrs. Dalloway but follows a handful of characters on a single day, who think out the process of their lives while attending to errands or sitting about on benches observing their world and the singing of an elderly woman on the street who either strikes them as necessary to the day’s traversing — or not. All of this to the intermittent chiming of Big Ben, which reminds them, I think, that life is constantly progressing them forward to death. Death seems a central focus in the novel.

Mrs. Dalloway is fixated on her party, which must go on. Septimus is a survivor from World War I — a war that exists as a sort of intrusion in the midst of previous England, England as it was before the war, a party being played out or a monarchy uncontested — or something. Septimus is, I think, a foil for Mrs. Dalloway’s views on life. He is the other England, the one emerging or perhaps the one that was killed, when war came to England.

Anyway, just to say I’m currently reading this one and liking it very much. I knew I’d like Woolf’s novels when I read her short story “A Haunted House” and then “met” her the writer in A Room of One’s Own. I own To the Lighthouse and am curious about reading it, too, eventually…

I will!

I’ll be working on:

• A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
• The Invisible Woman: The Story of Nellie Ternan and Charles Dickens
• & some of my side reads (click to see them)

I’m not doing mini-challenges or anything. Just reading.

I’ll update this page with a daily page count. :)

Stop by if you plan to join her!

Times: 11pm Wednesday - Midnight Friday

Running stats:
# Pages read: 277
# Books finished: 1
Time spent reading:  12 hours

Not as much as I’d hoped to accomplish, but I’m a slow reader!

Books Finished:

• The Invisible Woman: The Story of Nellie Ternan and Charles Dickens

Page counts:

• Wednesday wee hours:

# Pages read: 96
# Books finished: 0
Time spent reading: 3 hours

• Thursday by midnight:

# Pages read: 108
# Books finished: 1
Time spent reading: 5 hours

• Friday by midnight:

# Pages read: 73
# Books finished: 0
Time spent reading: 4 hours

As much as I LOVED embracing Shakespeare all last month (and into February!), I admit it exhausted my brain a bit. So I’ve been pushing the books around this week, thinking I “should” read Dickens because I said I would, and instead picking up Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, reading half, watching The Hours, wanting to read The Hours, reading some of The Secret Garden, (love, love, love it), and playing hide-and-seek with Dickens.

This morning the urge for some Dickens has returned!

I’m actually about halfway through the biography on Dickens’s affair with Nelly Ternan. A couple nights ago I watched a biography of Dickens life on PBS. So I do have him on the mind.

Today I’m going to try to make a dent in A Tale of Two Cities. I’ve already read the first two chapters, and oh my! It’s not like Oliver Twist, which made me struggle for the first two-thirds. There’s such a feeling of tension and Gothic atmosphere, right from the start. I love the parallels depicted in the famous opening, between the French and the British in 1775, when the book opens:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way–in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

There were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a plain face, on the throne of England; there were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a fair face, on the throne of France. In both countries it was clearer than crystal to the lords of the State preserves of loaves and fishes, that things in general were settled for ever.

And passages like this one such make me tingle with excitement:

A Wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it! Something of the awfulness, even of Death itself, is referable to this. No more can I turn the leaves of this dear book that I loved, and vainly hope in time to read it all. No more can I look into the depths of this unfathomable water, wherein, as momentary lights glanced into it, I have had glimpses of buried treasure and other things submerged. It was appointed that the book should shut with a a spring, for ever and for ever, when I had read but a page. It was appointed that the water should be locked in an eternal frost, when the light was playing on its surface, and I stood in ignorance on the shore. My friend is dead, my neighbour is dead, my love, the darling of my soul, is dead; it is the inexorable consolidation and perpetuation of the secret that was always in that individuality, and which I shall carry in mine to my life’s end. In any of the burial-places of this city through which I pass, is there a sleeper more inscrutable than its busy inhabitants are, in their innermost personality, to me, or than I am to them?

That writing is so rich! I want to read and re-read it, both for the artistry in the words, and because the passage provokes me to contemplation. THAT is writing!!

Dickens annoyed me throughout much of Oliver Twist, for being so heavily present in the tale and over-playing (in my opinion) the sympathy factor with Oliver. I don’t get the same feeling at all with A Tale of Two Cities. He’s there, making Dickens atmosphere as only Dickens can, but the tone is so much more realistic and serious, perhaps because it’s a later work. The parallels make me feel immediately that there is a magnetism between the characters and their situations — as if they’re all being pulled to the center.

I’m VERY excited to make a dent in this one today.

Today the folks at Broke and Bookish ask us to list the Top Ten Books that broke our hearts. Rather than offer any spoilers to explain my broken heart, I’ll just list the books in order of tears provoked.

If you’ve read them, you know why I cried:

Top Ten Books That Broke My Heart:

1. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott - A novel about four sisters growing up during the American Civil War while their father is away in the fighting. I cried the most for this one! And I still cry every time I see the movie, whatever version.
2. Hospital Sketches by Louisa May Alcott - Louisa May Alcott’s true and gruesome account of her experience as a war nurse at a military hospital in Washington, DC. There is a particular scene in this book that is excruciating, especially since I know the soldier depicted was a real man who really spoke the words as written.
3. Villette by Charlotte Brontë - Lucy Snowe is a quiet woman who keeps her life before the novel begins silent, telling of her travels to Villette, France to teach at a school where she meets a surly Frenchman. You’d have to read the whole book to understand the tears.
4. The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffeneggar* – A time traveler is forced to flit in and out of his wife’s life, from her childhood to the end of his own life. The novel tells of their love story as her memory of meeting him when he’s an older man visiting her girlhood home catches up with his first encounter of her when she’s a young woman, long after she’s fallen in love with him. I think this is the first book that ever made me cry.
5. Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White - A spider hatches a plot to save the life of a pig who will be slaughtered by the farmer who owns the barn where they live if she can’t make him see the value in the pig’s life. I didn’t cry at this when I was a kid, but I did on re-read.
6. Atonement by Ian McEwan - A little girl in England accuses her older sister’s boyfriend of molesting their cousin during the eve of the Second World War. TEAR. JERKER.
7. Mark Twain by Geoffrey C. Ward - The tragic life story of one of America’s finest authors. I cried and fell for Twain, when I read this. I had no idea who he was, behind the satire.
8. Anne of Green Gables by LM Montgomery  - A little girl from Novia Scotia is adopted by a Canadian family who wanted a boy. All who’ve read this know why I cried — and where!
9. Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell  - The daughter of a Southern plantation owner in Clayton County, Georgia is thrust into the American Civil War. I cried in so many places. Scarlett is incredible. And since I know much of the narrative was drawn from the author’s life, I couldn’t help but feel for Margaret Mitchell, too.
10. The Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller – An Italian woman in 1960s Iowa falls in love with a National Geographic photographer while her family is away at the fair. Okay, I’m a bit sappy to cry at this one. But I did!

This month’s question is:

In the epilogue for Fargo Rock City, Chuck Klosterman writes:

“It’s always been my theory that criticism is really just veiled autobiography; whenever someone writes about a piece of art, they’re really just writing about themselves.”

Do you agree?

My answer:

I find it difficult to answer this question because I have almost zero experience with literary analysis. That in itself tells me that analysis is autobiographical, because in order to analyze this question, I must have prior knowledge of the topic.

“Autobiographical” suggests that the critic is telling the story of his or her life through the literary critique. I find this to be an interesting suggestion, since literary criticism is usually praised for its objectivity. It’s supposed to focus on art for art’s sake, right?

Not necessarily. One must have some prior knowledge of feminism and its effects and causes to be able to critique a work of literature through a feminist lens. Yet to critique with a feminist lens doesn’t necessarily mean the critic has personally experienced feminism; he or she may have simply read about it.

Criticism can point out the different parts of a work of literature and discuss what makes it effective, but can one say what is “effective” without drawing on a store of prior knowledge/experience with literature? Can one recognize what is effective without comparing it to other works of literature and one’s own life or writing experience? Can one really be wholly objective? Is something inherently valuable, or is it valuable because we can recognize its value?

Quality work might offend a person in whom it triggers a memory; that doesn’t mean the work isn’t artistically solid – rather, that it effectively created emotion in the reader. (A sign that it is likely quality.)

Is a personal reaction to a work as “bad” or “good” any more or less autobiographical than a measure of a work’s merit by literary rubric? (Which draws upon past knowledge and experience?)

Some people disparage biographical criticism because the book’s author doesn’t belong in the middle of an analysis of his or her work. These analyzers would say the same about the reader: he or she doesn’t belong in the middle of the work. Reader response theorists would say: of course readers belong in the middle!

So is Klosterman talking about reader response critics? Feminist critics? Formalist critics? It’s hard to say, since I’m not getting Klosterman’s quote in context. But taken on it’s own, I’d say literary criticism is really far too broad a topic to fit itself to such a blanket statement.

- “Thinking of readers and the way they make sense of literature has led to what has been called ’reader-response criticism’, which claims that the meaning of the text is the experience of the reader (an experience that included hesitations, conjectures, and self-corrections). If a literary work is conceived as a succession of actions upon the understanding of a reader, then an interpretation of a work can be a story of that encounter, with its ups and downs: various conventions or expectations are brought into play, connections are posited, and expectations defeated or confirmed. To interpret a work is to tell a story of reading.” ( – p. 63. Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction by Jonathan Culler)

In which I indulge in a minor soap box moment:

I’ve noticed some contention among bloggers lately — about what is a “real” review, and what doesn’t belong in the literary conversation. (And what is a “professional” review, and what isn’t.) It’s hard for me to have a valid place in this conversation, since most involved in the discussion tend to review contemporary literature, and most of what I read is classic literature. Still, I have seen in some places the suggestion that “I” has no place in the discussion of literature, and it jolts me, every time I read it. The suggestion in some instances is that posts involving “self” are a waste of cyber space and nothing more than an indulgent airing of one’s personal baggage.  The notion of “self” intertwines with this month’s Literary Blog Hop question, which also discusses the connection between self and the books we read, and whether or not “self” defines or should define the way we talk about them. (Above.) In some cases, though, self is becoming tangled with emotion, and both are being dismissed as indulgent, in reviews.

I’m not experienced in the world of literature yet. I’ve only been doing this for two years. But I know wrong when I read it. I know pigeon-holing and group think – and I know that literature isn’t and shouldn’t be something that is only analyzed.

I’m certainly not dismissing analysis as unimportant. I’m not good at it yet, but I like to analyze, too, sometimes, and until recently had trouble reading in any way other than as an editor. 

But this is vital: books have the potential to ignite imagination, to inspire personal reflection and make readers feel they have “returned home” upon visit and revisit. Literary analysis is just one avenue through which one can experience literature, and I think to overlook (or worse, belittle) the discussion of self and emotion in response to literature is a mistake.

So often, I see personal reflections about literature belittled by questions like, “What are you arguing?” I see people “afraid” to post on literature because they don’t know how to analyze — when if they’d only write what they feel, they might find literary talk embraces them, and that analysis is something that can be slowly learned, as we become closer to literature.

When people discuss books, they aren’t always “arguing a theory.” Sometimes they’re sharing, expressing, exploring literature; asking questions of it rather than pronouncing answers; posting to make the solitary activity that is reading a more social one. It’s mind-boggling to me that this could be scorned – but I realize the scorn is very likely due to a misinterpretation of the purpose of these posts, and perhaps an understandable impatience with the blurring definition of a “book review,” which does sometimes head posts which are less critique than they are reflection.

Two things that I feel must be made clear:

There is literary criticism, and there is a personal journey through literature. One is about the book, and one is about the self in reaction to the book. Self cannot be excluded from a personal reaction to literature, and self is necessary only to a point, in literary criticism.

“I” posts among literary critics evoke a lot of criticism about emotion not belonging in literary analysis, which creates a message that those personally traversing through literature are trite and unnecessary in the literary conversation.

In literary criticism, we’re using the self to explore the literature. Self is only a tool through which we critique something outside ourselves, and since self is separate from the thing being critiqued, it is excluded as much as possible from the analysis. My view of an epilogue might be different from another reader’s view of an epilogue, but the epilogue itself is unchanged, and that unchanged quality is what is discussed in literary analysis.

In a personal journey through literature, we’re using the literature to explore ourselves and the world, and our place within the world. The literature is a tool through which we explore people, us and the world before and after us. And since self is the center thing exploring and being explored, it’s necessary to give self center stage. This is where “I feel,” “I wanted,” and “I loved” creeps into a post. Because the post is not a critique of the book; it’s a work of self-expression.

I think that these are two vital discussions that are not always recognizable to the other, so literary expressers find the analyzers dry and unfeeling and wonder why they aren’t expressing their emotion about literature, and literary analyzers find the expressers analytically inferior and wonder why they aren’t being less biased in their reviews.

I think it’s a miscommunication between two different modes of thinking. Speaking as an expresser, I can’t imagine removing self from a contemplation of literature, but I can absolutely understand why self would seem to be beside-the-point to an analyzer, whose emotions do not generally serve as their primary mode of analysis.

The line between analysis and self becomes blurred, however, when one starts realizing that reader-response criticism is considered a valid form of literary analysis, and that self is central to the analysis of literature through this lens.

To analyze a piece of literature is to see beyond its story: to see that Hamlet isn’t just a story about Denmark — it’s about the breakdown of the Elizabethan order, or men’s fear of feminine sexuality, or (more here.) If one can see all of that in literature, certainly one can see truths about self in literature — and thus, in some cases, literary critique is absolutely autobiographical, and posts about self are mandatory for a  full interpretation of the text.

To dismiss a discussion of self in literature as “veiled autobiography” or “an airing of one’s personal baggage” is to suggest that true literary critique can only happen by a prescribed set of instructions that is considered “professional” or, in other words “the way literary discussion has always been done.”

From what I understand about the world of literature at this point, until the advent of the Internet, pretty much the only time one saw in print a reaction to a book was either in a book club’s newsletter (I’ve never seen one, so I’m only assuming there is such a thing), in a student’s literature paper, or in a “professional” review in a newspaper or journal. Now people can react to literature from their bedroom or living room in their pajamas, and this new influx of voices is perhaps a culture shock to the elite few who used to claim the literary airwaves.

Book-blogging is a developing science, and it’s still pretty new and rusty. Whether or not a personal reflection about literature can be considered a “book review” is certainly something that needs further discussion. My personal feeling is that literary reflection/expression requires its own label — something that can distinguish it from analysis and that makes more clear that it’s an introspective look at literature rather than an attempt to critique the divergent parts of the book from a distance. I think ratings on sites like Goodreads and Library Thing need to be separated to reflect what is truly being rated: the book’s aesthetic/artistic quality in the opinion of the reviewer, or the reader’s personal enjoyment when contemplating the book. (Two very different ratings.) Most importantly, though, I think education and respect needs to be focused on both literary perspectives, in the book-blogging world as well as in the classroom. Analysis is as important as passion in literature — but not more important. Literary discussion should be encouraged, not pigeon-holed.

This is a left-brained world. I’ve had to deal with that fact all my life. Math class is vital; art class is voluntary. Imagination and personal reflection are often belittled in the “intellectual” world as invalid, subjective and unimportant, while to be able to imagine is the very life of the writer whose work is being critically (objectively) analyzed. Let us not turn literature into a left-brain-only exercise. The right brain, though often unrecognized, really can speak a few truths in its inspection of literature. Analysis when it is most effective is a combination of both brain and soul. The self, experience, imagination and personality advances the brain beyond computing into expression – the gift that is humanity and that is made immortal by art and literature.

Don’t let poetry be a mere object of mechanical dissection. Not for you. Feel it, question it, tear it apart. Learn from it, not how to beat out a rythm to its meter — but how to be human. How to be awake and alive. That’s literature. It echoes nature itself. It’s man’s contribution to the sunrise. If analysis helps you question that, then question it through analysis. But don’t go through analysis blindly to follow the pack. Do it your own way. Be your own professor.

I saw some posts about this event last week, and it sounded like such a fun idea I knew I’d have to stop by and answer at least one letter. I don’t know if I’ll have time to do more, but I’ll definitely be keeping up with the game. It looks like fun!!

Today the first letter was posted by Jane Eyre, who seeks advice about what to do now that she’s falling for the master of Thornfield Hall.

Her letter is posted below, followed by my response, by Scarlett O’Hara:

Dear Period Drama Advice Column,

Miss Eyre writing her letter.

I am the governess at Thornfield Hall, the home of Mr. Rochester. When I first met him, he seemed to be very harsh, eccentric, and unconventional, but I now find myself falling in love with him. He has been the only person who I could talk to as an equal. I had not intended to love him: I tried to fight it. He made me love him without looking at me, but he is to be shortly married to a Miss Ingram, a beautiful but subconscious person. I cannot help but love him. I’ve said that my pupil, Adele, should go to school and that I should seek a new situation, but I cannot bear to leave Thornfield: I have not been trampled on there; I have not been petrified; I have not been buried with inferior minds, and excluded from every glimpse of communion with what is bright and energetic and high. What shall I do?

Sincerely,
Jane Eyre

Dear Janie -

Scarlett O'Hara receiving the letter.

Fiddle-dee-dee! You don’t go around telling him all that, do you? That you’re “in love” and all that twaddle? I never heard of such bad taste.

Sugar, I can hear the grey dripping off you like paint off a dull old Leonardo something-or-other. You’re about as lively as a bowl of butter beans.

Here’s what you do: cover up that grey with a pretty red frock. Something lively and daring that’ll make all the girls in your county green with envy. Don’t say things like “glimpse of communion.” You sound like you have both boots in the grave, and anyhow, men don’t want to think that you’re smarter than they are. When you get with your Mr. Rochester (who I must say sounds mighty manageable), tell him you think he’s just about the bravest thing you ever saw. Don’t get him too vain. A vain man is ornery and not a lot of fun, once he gets to drinking. Just flatter him enough to make him notice you, and then act like you hate him. Yes! Act like you’d rather hear anything from anybody so long as it isn’t him. That’ll heat him up something fierce. And once he’s good and jealous, play like you’re homesick or something. Stand by the piano, and try to look sad and frail next to Miss Ingram. The idea is to make her look twice your size and mean as a grizzly. Once Mr. Rochester comes over to soothe you, good grief, liven up quick! Tears are only bait, child – if you overuse them, Miss Ingram will start looking lively and you’ll look as pale and mealy-mouthed as you are.

Once you see that he’s peaked, be sure to laugh at something he says – it doesn’t matter what. Just laugh and tell him he’s the smartest and handsomest thing you ever met. And then start to feel better and tell him he’s the reason you feel better, and if he weren’t around to make you feel better, why, you just don’t know what you’d do. Then get him to turn the conversation around on himself. Tell him you expect you’d fade plum away, if not for his company and clever conversation. Then when he’s getting all puffed up, get angry at him for not asking to fill your dance card, or whatever it is you people do out there in England. When he apologizes and asks you to dance, tell him you don’t know, but you expect you might have time to dance with him in a week or so – if your other beaus don’t get too jealous.

Here’s where you leave Mr. Rochester there stunned, while you flirt with all of the other boys in the room. Act like you don’t even notice him, until the last moment, when everyone is heading home. Then start crying and tell him you can’t believe he left you all alone and never once asked you to dance or sing a duet together. When he proposes (and he will), tell him you’ll have to think about it, but give him an encouraging dimple – something to let him know you will eventually come around to him, but right now you’re so overwhelmed and have had so many other offers, you’re just not sure which to choose. And great balls of fire, Janie – don’t look desperate! Only a sad owl accepts the first proposal. Keep it light and act like you haven’t got a care in the world. Say something evasive like “how wonderful you are!” to let him know you’re having the time of your life, and you don’t care two pins who you marry. That’ll keep him hot. Let him propose a few times in the next couple weeks, then eventually succumb, but not until he offers the greatest and best diamond in the county. You want that Miss Ingram to bleed envy.

And sugar, do try hard not to be so dull. Men don’t like a dull grey girl steeped in melancholy. Try to be a bit livelier, or Mr. Rochester probably will marry Miss Ingram, who I must say sounds like she’s playing the field with a sharper hand than you are.

Sincerely,
Scarlett O’Hara

Be sure to check out the original letter, if you’re interested in participating!

Opening lines: “William Shakespeare ranks as one of the finest writers in the history of the world. Since his death in 1616, no other writer has surpassed his ability to capture the human soul in words; and no other writer has been more read, more written about, and more debated…” 

My thoughts: 

“Friends! Romans! Countrymen! Lend me your ears.” (Ha! Now I know what that means.)

I’m excited to finally be writing about this book — my last for Allie’s Shakespeare Reading Month in January. (Deadline to link posts is tomorrow!)

Before I get started, I’m going to rank all of the Shakespeare books I’ve read so far now, in order of preference (favorite being at the top.)

1. Macbeth
2. Hamlet
3. Othello
4. Shakespeare’s Sonnets
5. The Taming of the Shrew
6. A Midsummer Night’s Dream
7. As You Like It
8. Twelfth Night

Later this year, I’m (hoping) to read -

• The Tempest
• Romeo & Juliet
• Much Ado About Nothing
• Julius Caesar
• King Lear
• Richard III
• The Comedy of Errors
• The Winter’s Tale

I’m curious to see where they’ll fit into my favorites lists. I know now, having read a handful of plays and poured through the guide I’m about to describe, that I prefer the tragedies to the comedies, and that it’s very likely I’ll prefer the histories to the comedies. Whether I’ll prefer the histories over the tragedies, remains to be seen. 

Shakespeare: A Guide to the Complete Works has convinced me that I definitely want to read Shakespeare’s complete works. The book is so useful and was an awesome accompaniment to my reading last month. Not only did it help me understand the plays I was reading, it filled in a lot of the mystery about what I can expect, as I explore Shakespeare’s canon. Having read it (and it is a big, heavy book), I feel almost as if I’ve experienced Shakespeare. Obviously I haven’t read most of his canon yet, but this book takes me through Elizabethan England, Shakespeare’s life, and his entire works. Being a right-brainer, I need to see the whole picture before I can begin to see the details, so experiencing a summary and synopsis of every play makes me feel confident to begin exploring the actual plays on my own. I’m not sure it was designed to be read before the plays.

Some people might prefer to simply read the plays and reference this book after. I’m really glad I read it first. It makes me so excited to keep reading!

The book is divided into several sections. I hopped all over the place, depending on my mood, reading first about Shakespeare’s life and era, then about his poems, and finally about his plays, beginning with the ones that most interested me (the ones I intended to read pretty soon), and ending with the histories, which I didn’t realize would end up being the most intriguing to me!

The discussion of each play within the guide includes the dates of compsition and performance when it’s known, the play’s setting (including the historical setting, if the play is based on real people), a breakdown of the characters, a description of the type of play it is (tragedy, comedy, history, tragicomendy, problem play, Roman play), Shakespeare’s probable sources for each play, a plot summary (usually about four to eight pages, with passages discussed within), a breakdown of the themes, discussion of the climax, extra information (ie: why Hamlet didn’t inherit the throne in Denmark when his father died, and how old he was in the play, etc), fascinating facts, historical notes, and study questions. The sections for each play averaged 6-12 pages:

• Introduction:
  • Briefly discusses Shakespeare’s life, genres, language & verse, censorship in his day, the four periods of his plays (early, balanced, overflowing, and final), allusions to mythology, the Elizabethan age, the way Shakespeare likely prepared manuscripts (quill pen, lamp/candlelight, without dictionary.) Also it lists purposes for using verse as opposed to prose within a play, and vice versa.
• The Plays:
  • Hamlet
    • The notes make obvious how much I missed the first time I read this play!! The gap in Hamlet’s age? Ophelia’s death might have more significance than I noticed the first time. I need to reread!
  • Macbeth
    • I loved the section about witchcraft in Macbeth’s time, and the historical notes about the characters.
  • King Lear
    • The summary DEFINITELY makes me want to read this one — soon!!
  • Othello
    • I had no idea this was a play involving racism. The summary made me want to read this one quickly. (And I did.)
  • Romeo and Juliet
    • This one includes a very long plot summary. I read this play in high school but barely remember it. I actually appreciated the note on the historical setting most in this play. I had no idea it was set in the 1300s, Italy!
  • Julius Caesar
    • I read this one in high school, too. The historical information on this play makes it sound SO interesting. I didn’t really have a clue what was happening, last time I read it. Looking forward to it!
  • Antony and Cleopatra
    • What? This is right after Julius Caesar, and Mark Antony is in both plays? Again, the historical notes were fascinating!! I don’t own this play, but I really want to read it.
  • Coriolanus
    • This one takes place in Rome about 450 years before Antony and Cleopatra. (Thanks for the correction, Amanda!) I had never heard about this one, so I definitely loved reading about the history that inspired it.
  • Timon of Athens
    • What I remember most about this one is the comparison to Dickens’ Scrooge, and the fact that Timon was a real man, who started out rich and happy and ended up horrible and bitter. Curious!
  • Titus Andronicus
    • I hurried up to read the passages on this one because o says I should read it. It’s a bloodbath!
  • Troilus and Cressida
    • This one’s about Troy!! And because I read about it, I was able to answer a Jeopardy question the other day. I wish I owned a copy so I could read it with Homer & Virgil later this year.
  • The Merchant of Venice
    • Again, I didn’t realize this was about racism. This is probably the #1 play I want to read when I move past the books I own. I love Portia’s speech — and Shylock’s.
  • As You Like It
    • I read this right before I read the play. It definitely helped me understand the actual text.
  • A Midsummer Night’s Dream
    • Again, I read this section right before I read the actual play, to better understand it. I was actually dreading reading this one, but the summary made me think I might like it. I had no idea it was set in Athens!
  • Much Ado About Nothing
    • I think I’m going to like this story of Benedict and Beatrice! The Shrew idea extended?
  • Love’s Labour’s Lost
    • Oh, how interesting! There’s supposed to be a second half to this (a sequel), but it’s lost.
  • Measure for Measure
    • An eye for an eye play! I am intrigued. This is another one I really want to read after I get through the books I own.
  • The Taming of the Shrew
    • I really appreciate the way this set up the play for me before I read it.
  • Twelfth Night
    • I laughed hysterically at the summary, but when I read the play, I didn’t find it very funny. I’m thinking on this one I should have just read the play and checked out the summary after! But it was one of the early one’s I read, and I was afraid I wouldn’t understand it.
  • The Tempest
    • Oh! The island they’re shipwrecked at might be America, says this book. I am QUITE intrigued.
  • Two Gentlemen of Verona
    • This is one of Shakespeare’s early plays. The description does not sound at all interesting to me, but I don’t tend to go for the comedies really. I’ll still read it.
  • The Winter’s Tale
    • The plot of this one reminds me of the debate between sense and sensibility! Because the king’s emotions overtake him. Curious to explore this one!
  • The Merry Wives of Windsor
    • This is one I very, very, very much want to read! Apparently Elizabeth I requested Shakespeare write another play with John Falstaff from Henry IV in it. Shakespeare came up with this, set in Elizabethan England with a feminist edge. Want. To. Read.
  • All’s Well That Ends Well
    • For some reason, the premise of this one feels like Jane Austen. I need to read it to see if I feel like that after. Sounds great though.
  • The Comedy of Errors
    • *sigh* – more mistaken identities and confusion. I don’t really look forward to this. I don’t find the mistaken identity thing funny, especially since I already read it in Twelfth Night. I hope Shakespeare proves me wrong!
  • Cymbeline
    • This one again reminds me of Jane Austen for some reason (though it’s set way earlier!) It makes me think “aw!” so I can’t wait to read it.
  • Pericles, Prince of Tyre
    • Shakespeare’s “Job”? I think this one could be good.
  • The Two Noble Kinsmen
    • This reminds me too much of Two Gentlemen from Verona, though it is cool to see the characters Theseus and Hippolyta from A Midsummer Night’s Dream revived. I just don’t care for the comedies that much. Prove me wrong, Shakespeare! This one was written jointly with John Fletcher and is described as “lackluster.” It sounds it!
  • King John
    • Here’s where I get intrigued!! This sounds like such a great play. I wrote in my book, “This would be an awesome movie!” This one’s a history that talks about the feud between England and France in the 11th century.
  • Edward III
    • A play that focuses on the causes of the 100 Years War between France and England. It sounds SO GOOD. I can’t wait to read it!!!
  • Richard II
    • A play about how Henry IV becomes Henry IV. Yes, still movie-worthy!
  • Henry IV, Part I
    • The story from above continues. We meet Prince Hal and John Falstaff. (Elizabeth I’s favorite character, apparently.) Intrigued!!
  • Henry IV, Part II
    • The above story continues, only Prince Hal is older and more mature. I STILL say I’ll love the histories most!
  • Henry V
    • Prince Hal is now king. This one is supposed to be very patriotic, with a lot of Henry’s speeches still repeated by students today. (I wouldn’t know if that’s true, since I don’t live in the UK.) Anyway, this one is again, awesome sounding. More war with France and a brave king.
  • Henry VI, Part I
    • Henry V dies, and his little boy becomes king. Lots of scheming and treachery behind the scenes. This one features the burning at the stake of Joan of Arc!! I didn’t know she was in a Shakespeare play!
  • Henry VI, Part II
    • Young King Henry gets married, and the War of the Roses begins. Need I say again that I’m intrigued?
  • Henry VI, Part III
    • Beheadings and war! Henry’s wife betrays him and he’s imprisoned in the Tower of London. The War of the Roses continues, ripping England apart.The House of York and the House of Lancaster vie for the throne.
  • Richard III
    • Richard of the House of York usurps the throne from his brother Edward, who usurped it from Henry VI. He becomes power hungry and a bloodbath ensues. (This is one I’m especially looking forward to. Richard III is supposed to be an incredible character study of a psychopath. I LOVE the opening soliloquy.)
  • Henry VIII
    • Anne Boleyn and Catherine of Aragon? Yes, please!!
• The Poems
  • I read through these in detail. I’ve already read the sonnets, but I plan to return to this section when I read Shakepeare’s other poems. Each is given some good coverage. The section is about fifty pages long.
• Authorship Questions
  • This is a very brief section (6 pages long) discussing the conspiracy theories about who might have penned Shakespeare, and whether or not he’s a plagiarist.
• The Theatre
  • A fifteen page section detailing the Globe Theatre, what it was like to act in Shakespeare’s day, and a list of stage cues and drama terms.
• Gallimaufry 
  • A hodgepodge of information about Shakespeare’s childhood, his possible appearance and voice, his schooling, religion (he may have secretly been Catholic), wedding, possible taverns in his area, the Gunpowder Plot, Medicine and the Four Humours in the Elizabethan era, feudalism and castles, the rank of royalty and nobility, and 12 fascinating facts about Shakespeare.

Final thoughts:

This book was incredibly useful, and SO fun to read, especially when I got to the histories! I learned so much.

Would I reread Shakespeare: A Guide to the Complete Works?

I will MOST DEFINITELY be referring to it in the future, as I pour through the actual texts!

- “Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling as to sight? or art thou but
A dagger of the mind, a false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?”

   

Quick synopsis:

Macbeth is an ambitious general in Scotland in 1040. He impresses Duncan I, king of Scotland from 1034 to 1040, when he and a fellow general, Banquo, fight valiantly against the Norwegians in war, and Macbeth single-handedly defeats a traitor.

Three witches meet Macbeth and Banquo on their way to the king’s castle to inform Macbeth that he is not only about to be named Lord of Cawdor (in place of the turncoat), but he will also one day become king of Scotland – and after him, Banquo’s descendants will take the throne. A lot of them.

Macbeth is intrigued but a little jealous that he only gets one reign while Banquo’s descendants reign for centuries. He doesn’t exactly believe the witches, but he’s not opposed to picturing himself on the throne and hurrying along the process. He writes to his wife to tell her the news.

Meanwhile, he arrives at Duncan’s castle, where he is named Lord of Cawdor (as predicted.) King Duncan invites himself to Macbeth’s castle to celebrate. Macbeth arrives home first. His wife, Lady Macbeth, convinces him to kill King Duncan in his sleep that night, so Macbeth can hurry up and take the throne. (Apparently she doesn’t trust fate.) Macbeth is hesitant about her plan, his wife mocks his manhood, he goes through with it. They frame the servants, Macbeth is named king, and ambition becomes a monster on Scotland’s throne.

Lots of blood. Lots of killing. Etc.

This tragedy was probably super scary for the Elizabethans, many of which very much believed in witchcraft. The late 1500s had seen a crazy “Are you a witch? I’m going to burn you alive!!” phase, so Macbeth? Probably had them clinging to one another in terror.

My thoughts:

Oh. My. Goodness. This play.

I absolutely loved it!! I’m lukewarm to the comedies compared to the tragedies, and until I reread Hamlet, I’m going to have to say Macbeth is my favorite of Shakespeare’s tragedies so far. (Though I loved Hamlet. I just don’t think I was mentally ready for it last year. I need to revisit.)

Macbeth is the first play I’ve read by Shakespeare where I was leant forward in my chair the entire time, eager to find out what would happen next. The way he writes guilt!! And craziness!! And the atmosphere of Scotland!! I felt like I was watching a movie!

I love the way Shakespeare employs a hypnotic rhyme whenever the witches are on-stage:

“By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.”

Often when evil is being planned on-stage, the rhyming begins. And when Shakespeare plays characters who are innocent rather than scheming, he resorts to prose that doesn’t rhyme.

That’s intriguing!! The way he uses the rhythm of the words to create atmosphere!

The three witches that start the play are basically a representation of fate. So the way Macbeth goes in and toys with fate creates a pretty heady message. Banquo’s fate, as predicted by the witches, came true without his intercession. Macbeth couldn’t rely on fate itself to see that he became king. Hearing that he was to become king instigated a bloodbath in pursuit of fate. One could read this play simply for entertainment, or one could puzzle over Shakespeare’s apparent message: Should we mess with fate? Can we mess with fate? Is everything predestined?

If Macbeth had done nothing, would he have still become king of Scotland?

“Fair is foul and foul is fair.”

The witches say this at the start of the play, basically suggesting that there is no good in humanity — nothing distinguishable between good and evil. Macbeth starts out the play basically good, but he becomes a murderer who leaves a bloodbath in his wake. Shakespeare seems to be asking — is humanity naturally amoral?

He poses the question through Macbeth and his wife, but he offers an answer through Malcolm, the good prince of Scotland (son of Duncan) who values life and practices honor and kindness, and through Banquo, the foil to Macbeth, who is offered an incredible fate and chooses not to tamper with it, despite the temptation that ambition offers him.

Creepy passage? Lady Macbeth’s plea for evil enough to commit a murder near the beginning of the play. Bone-chilling:

Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts! unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top full
Of direst cruelty; make thick my blood,
Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
The effect and it!

Connection to my heritage:

Before I read this play, I had NO IDEA (which is pretty stupid, probably, given the title of the play) that it was set in Scotland. That in itself kicked this one to the top of my happy list, because my heritage on Mom’s side is Scottish (though not since the 1600s — ha!) My mother’s family has recently been traced from present-day Georgia to colonial Jamestown in 1611-ish, to Kilbirnie (Ayrshire) Scotland for several centuries. My great-great-great (etc) grandfather Sir Reginald Crawford’s sister Margaret married Sir Alan Wallace of Ellerslie. They were the parents of Sir William Wallace.

Until about 700AD, we were in some really weird country that starts with an ‘E’ (I can’t remember the name, but it’s on my ancestry.com page!), which used to be the name of some territory near France. Then we pushed through England and into Kilbirnie as the de Craufords:

The Castle Crawford, home of my Kilbirnie ancestors. 

William Wallace - Freedom fighter of Scotland 
in the 1200 & 1300s, and my cousin.

What’s that? The sound of people not caring?

Too bad! I’m a huge fan of the show Who Do You Think You Are? and watch it whenever it’s new (with my mom, who also loves it!) It’s a show that explores the stars’ roots. I love it when it takes us from The American Civil War to Africa. Or from America to French royalty! My ancestry takes me to England, France and Scotland. So far!

Tracing one’s roots is SO IMPORTANT. I didn’t have a clue where I came from until a couple years ago; now I feel so whole — the same way I feel when I explore literature. The people that came before me fill me up with life and this ecstatic feeling of camaraderie. Like — “We’ve been where you are. You’re part of the chain. Now what are you going to do with your moment in history?”

So! That’s how I felt, opening up Macbeth and realizing it’s set in Scotland. I felt like I was home.

You know. Except for all the horrible bloodshed…

Connection to James I:

Macbeth was a real man. So was Duncan. Banquo’s descendants* really did claim the throne, and they led to King James I, the direct descendant of Banquo. James I took the throne of England after the death of Queen Elizabeth I about two years before Shakespeare wrote this play. (James I is the king who authorized the King James Bible.)

History’s “actual” Banquo helped plot the death of Duncan with Macbeth. Shakespeare apparently thought it best to rewrite this part within Macbeth, making Banquo an innocent foil for Macbeth and allowing James I to proudly experience the play through his own ancestor.

See? Ancestry is awesome.

James I, who believed in witches, wrote a book called Demonology about the hidden world of witches. So he was probably all about this play. Elizabeth I? Was all about Sir John Falstaff from The Merry Wives of Windsor and Henry IV, two plays I cannot wait to read.

Would I reread Macbeth? YES!! And I DEFINITELY want to see it performed.

Goes great with: “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe

Notable passages:

• “Double, double, toil and trouble;
  Fire burn, and cauldron bubble!”
• “To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
  Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
  To the last syllable of recorded time;
  And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
  The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
  Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
  That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
  And then is heard no more. It is a tale
  Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
  Signifying nothing.”
• “Methought I heard a voice cry, Sleep no more!
  Macbeth does murder sleep, – the innocent sleep;
  Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleave of care,
  The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath,
  Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,
  Chief nourisher in life’s feast.”
• “I have almost forgot the taste of fears;
  The time has been, my senses would have cool’d
  To hear a night-shriek; and my fell of hair
  Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir
  As life were in’t: I have supp’d full with horrors;
  Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts
  Cannot once start me.”

 

 

 

See more posts about William Shakespeare

Pages: 272

Published: 1605

I read this book for Allie’s Shakespeare Month, and this is Book #8 for me in the 52 books in 52 weeks Challenge.

Like this play? Check out what else I’ve read in this era, or search for books by author. You can see how this play ranks among my favorites on my book ranking page.