Savoring Shakespeare...

The summer I turned eight my parents took me down to the Utah Shakespearean Festival in Cedar City, Utah, to see my first Shakespearean plays: A Midsummer Night's Dream and Twelfth Night. It was the start of a lifelong love affair with Shakespeare for me. The next year we saw A Comedy of Errors, then As You Like It and Taming of the Shrew. Romeo and Juliet was my first tragedy. (And, having already seen it onstage, it was that much easier to read later on in school!) Other tragedies followed: Antony and Cleopatra, Othello, King Lear, Hamlet, and Macbeth.

It was Jennifer Lee Carrell's novel, Interred With Their Bones, that inspired me to read all 37 of Shakespeare's plays in the order that he wrote them. (Although not everyone agrees on what that order is.) I've made my way through 9 histories, 6 tragedies, and 7 comedies. It's been fun. Some plays are definitely better than others. While I loved A Comedy of Errors onstage, it wasn't that great to read; and while I've never seen Two Gentleman of Verona, it's become one of my favorite plays.

I have to admit that I've read a few of the plays out of order because they went along with some other book that I happened to be reading at the time. Discord's Apple by Carrie Vaughn led me to Troilus and Cressida, while What Time Devours by A.J. Hartley led me to Love's Labour's Lost. I've read a few other books with a Shakespearean connection--like Kathryn Johnson's The Gentleman Poet which has ties to The Tempest, and  The Tragedy of Arthur by Arthur Phillips, which is about a made-up Shakespeare play. Shakespeare and storytelling just seem to go together. So, here's to Shakespeare and ALL his stories!

What's your favorite play?