What Shakespeare books do you recommend reading first?
I read Romeo & Juliet and MacBeth in school but don’t really remember a huge amount from them so would happily reread them. What would you suggest as good starter books?
Macbeth is an excellent one. I also enjoy Othello, but found The Taming of the Shrew and as Midsummer Night’s Dream easier reads.
SooraOnFire on
Much Ado About Nothing is one of my favorites of his comedic plays. Twelfth Night, The Tempest, and As You Like It, also. For tragic plays, Hamlet, Henry V, and King Lear are excellent. Long and dense, but worth it.
Remarkable-Photo-554 on
Definitely Hamlet (another tragedy) Midsummer nights dream (my favorite Shakespeare comedy) is very fun. King Lear if you liked the tragedy aspect of Romeo & Juliet and Macbeth. My personal favorite play is Macbeth I just love the witches
BirdAndWords on
Much Ado About Nothing is funny and has some great insults
Midsummer’s Night Dream is amazing and deals with the fey
Twelfth Night is another comedy involving gender bending disguises and great absurdity
Henry V is a quality history and has some truly amazing passages
Othello is great if you like intrigue and back stabbing
I would recommend staying away from The Tempest. It is phenomenal and my person favorite, but it very different from the rest of his work
girlwhoreadsalot on
I’m in the same boat, but I remember really struggling to read them. My teacher always said they were meant to been seen/heard, not read. So I’ve been rereading with audiobooks and it’s been great fun!
ForsakenStatus214 on
Midsummer Night’s Dream and As You Like It are great places to start.
Weekly_Leg_2457 on
Here’s the thing: they are plays and thus never really meant to be read. If you really want to revisit Shakespeare, watch a performance. If you can’t see one live, you can find them online. In fact, Shakespeare’s Globe in London posts full performances on their site.
If you can find their performance of Twelfth Night with Mark Rylance as Olivia, that would be a great place to start (performed in 2012, released as a film 2013). They cast that production the way it would have been done in Shakespeare’s time: with men in all roles. Because this is a play about gender-swapping, it makes the humor that much funnier.
Anyway regardless of which play you choose, I suggest that you watch it first, and then if you want, go back and read the play — I think it will enhance your understanding and appreciation of the language.
Candid-Astronomer904 on
I know this is primarily meant for high school students, but I like reading the Folger Shakespeare books. It overall explains things clearly enough for a moderately well-read high schooler to understand. I started with Merchant of Venice with that series.
flawlessmoon4 on
The Tempest
Bulawayoland on
I’ve read a fair amount of Shakespeare and really, you don’t learn much. The way he uses language is kind of addictive; it’s like a poem you can’t quite figure out why it affects you the way it does, but you really can’t just let it go either; but the plots and the characters don’t reel me in. They’re not works I come back to again and again. People today are not what they were then, and so his characters have limited relevance, and authors today handle situations in a much more complex way than they were used to then, and are more effective than they were then, at least with us, and in that sense we have better authors now, I think. Read Cormac McCarthy’s book Suttree, or William Faulkner’s The Hamlet, or basically any of Larry McMurtry’s novels, and you meet real people in real situations. That’s not true of Shakespeare any more, although it might have been once.
I’m not sorry I read Richard II; it has some wonderful poetry. I’m not sorry I watched the Zeffirelli movie of Romeo and Juliet; the Queen Mab speech was astonishingly good. I’m not sorry I watched any of the Royal Shakespeare Company productions of various of his plays; they have some wonderful acting. But just Shakespeare, by himself… really, we have all moved on. It’s good to know what people are talking about, when they talk about Shakespeare, but it’s not good for much more than that.
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Macbeth is an excellent one. I also enjoy Othello, but found The Taming of the Shrew and as Midsummer Night’s Dream easier reads.
Much Ado About Nothing is one of my favorites of his comedic plays. Twelfth Night, The Tempest, and As You Like It, also. For tragic plays, Hamlet, Henry V, and King Lear are excellent. Long and dense, but worth it.
Definitely Hamlet (another tragedy) Midsummer nights dream (my favorite Shakespeare comedy) is very fun. King Lear if you liked the tragedy aspect of Romeo & Juliet and Macbeth. My personal favorite play is Macbeth I just love the witches
Much Ado About Nothing is funny and has some great insults
Midsummer’s Night Dream is amazing and deals with the fey
Twelfth Night is another comedy involving gender bending disguises and great absurdity
Henry V is a quality history and has some truly amazing passages
Othello is great if you like intrigue and back stabbing
I would recommend staying away from The Tempest. It is phenomenal and my person favorite, but it very different from the rest of his work
I’m in the same boat, but I remember really struggling to read them. My teacher always said they were meant to been seen/heard, not read. So I’ve been rereading with audiobooks and it’s been great fun!
Midsummer Night’s Dream and As You Like It are great places to start.
Here’s the thing: they are plays and thus never really meant to be read. If you really want to revisit Shakespeare, watch a performance. If you can’t see one live, you can find them online. In fact, Shakespeare’s Globe in London posts full performances on their site.
If you can find their performance of Twelfth Night with Mark Rylance as Olivia, that would be a great place to start (performed in 2012, released as a film 2013). They cast that production the way it would have been done in Shakespeare’s time: with men in all roles. Because this is a play about gender-swapping, it makes the humor that much funnier.
Anyway regardless of which play you choose, I suggest that you watch it first, and then if you want, go back and read the play — I think it will enhance your understanding and appreciation of the language.
I know this is primarily meant for high school students, but I like reading the Folger Shakespeare books. It overall explains things clearly enough for a moderately well-read high schooler to understand. I started with Merchant of Venice with that series.
The Tempest
I’ve read a fair amount of Shakespeare and really, you don’t learn much. The way he uses language is kind of addictive; it’s like a poem you can’t quite figure out why it affects you the way it does, but you really can’t just let it go either; but the plots and the characters don’t reel me in. They’re not works I come back to again and again. People today are not what they were then, and so his characters have limited relevance, and authors today handle situations in a much more complex way than they were used to then, and are more effective than they were then, at least with us, and in that sense we have better authors now, I think. Read Cormac McCarthy’s book Suttree, or William Faulkner’s The Hamlet, or basically any of Larry McMurtry’s novels, and you meet real people in real situations. That’s not true of Shakespeare any more, although it might have been once.
I’m not sorry I read Richard II; it has some wonderful poetry. I’m not sorry I watched the Zeffirelli movie of Romeo and Juliet; the Queen Mab speech was astonishingly good. I’m not sorry I watched any of the Royal Shakespeare Company productions of various of his plays; they have some wonderful acting. But just Shakespeare, by himself… really, we have all moved on. It’s good to know what people are talking about, when they talk about Shakespeare, but it’s not good for much more than that.