Hamlet by William Shakespeare

I read this several times, in high school and college, but this was my first time reading it on my own, for pleasure. There is such a difference reading it on my own, now, as an adult, as opposed to the torture of reading it as a high schooler. Shakespeare's plays really felt impenetrable in my tenth- and eleventh-grade English classes, but they feel interesting and fresh and relatively easy to read now. I don't know if that's just because I'm a better reader, or if it's because I don't absolutely need to understand every line and every symbol that shows up throughout the play; it's just nice to read them and actually like them instead of suffering through them. I listened to this while reading along, because I've found that I like the plays best when I do both--I can understand what's going on better when I hear it, but I don't zone out and stop listening if I'm reading along. I know I'm not getting the most in-depth reading of Hamlet, but I really enjoyed it.

It's a little absurd to try and write a review of Hamlet, considering it's one of the most famous works in the English language, so I'm not even going to try. I am really happy to have read it, and I'm very proud to have reached my goal of reading five Shakespeare plays this year. I may try to do it again next year--because it turns out they aren't really that hard to read.

There was one line in particular that stood out to me: "There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so." I feel like that goes along with a lot of the psychology/life coaching things that people talk about today--you can't control what happens to you, but you can control how you think about it. I like how Hamlet said it better, though.

Macbeth by William Shakespeare

Tommy and I are going to see Macbeth performed tomorrow (there's a Shakespeare in the Park theater group here, which I'm so excited to go see), and I had planned to read this before going, but thought I'd left it too late and missed my chance. Well, it turned out that I borrowed the audiobook from the library, and it was only 1 hour and 45 minutes long, and I was able to listen and read along today during naptime and after the kids went to bed. I read this in high school, and maybe even in college as well, and actually re-read my original high school copy today, but I didn't remember much and had confused much of the storyline of Hamlet and Macbeth in my heads. Basically all I remembered about this story was Lady Macbeth and "Out, out, damned spot!" But I am so pleased with these re-readings of Shakespeare's plays, because they are so much better than I realized they were when I read them in high school. This time, reading Macbeth, (and listening to it), the emotions and the horror and the creepiness of the whole story was so apparent. The witches, and Lady Macbeth's sleepwalking/insanity, and Banquo's ghost appearing--it was a perfect October read (I love reading slightly creepy things in October!). Lady Macbeth was just as creepy as I remember--she needed only the slightest hint to start urging Macbeth to kill the king, and was so determined to do it and wouldn't listen to any of his protests... until she was so overcome with remorse that she started to go insane and eventually killed herself. Macbeth was remorseful before doing it, and wavered as to whether they should go through with their plans, but once he was committed, was determined to go down fighting and didn't recognize Lady Macbeth's remorse as valid at all.

There were so many well-written lines and amazing parts in this play, but I didn't mark any of them down. The best one was Macbeth's famous last soliloquy, which just resonates so well that I'll copy it here:

"Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
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."

Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare

I wish I had more mental power or energy or time to analyze and write about all these Shakespeare plays I've been reading (all three of them, haha)--it feels cheap to review them with a number of stars and a one-paragraph summary of what I thought about them. All I can say for now is that I really liked reading this. It definitely raised a lot of thoughts about men and women and romance, with all these misconceptions about who Viola was and who was falling in love with whom, and I'm sure I could have written a huge essay about this years ago in college. But for now, I'll just say that I didn't realize the quote "Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them" came from this play, and that it is read in a comic situation and has an ironic twist being read by Malvolio. It gives a whole different meaning to the quote, haha.

A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare

I am making good progress on my goal to read a few Shakespeare plays this year. I finished this one last week and am just getting around to writing about it. I loved how many memorable, oft-quoted lines were in this play, particularly "The true course of love never did run smooth" and "Though she be but little, she is fierce" (which I always think of with Lucy in mind). And, "Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind / And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind." I thought this play was funny, cute, and really enjoyable to read. I thought the last act was not a great ending to the play, though--it seems like something that actors/playwrights would think was funny but not the audience. I wanted more drama from the forest with the lovers instead.

I feel silly having only about 8 sentences to say about a Shakespeare play and basically concluding "I liked it" and that's it, but I don't have the brainpower or time right now to write much more. So, I liked it!

The Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare

Look at me, I'm sooooo cultured, just sitting here on a Sunday reading a Shakespeare play like it's no big deal. Ha! I have meant to re-read some Shakespeare plays for years and years, and now I finally have a good reason to: we are going to England in August and we will be seeing a Shakespeare play at the Globe Theater. THIS Shakespeare play, to be exact. We bought tickets for The Comedy of Errors one of the last nights we will be in London. I have to say that I have spent my whole life imagining London, and hearing about the Globe Theater, so this is the culmination of a whole life of being a book-lover and an English major, and I am so excited. I also was pleasantly surprised that this was a reasonably easy play to read and to follow. I think I had my idea of Shakespeare plays coming from my high school experiences, struggling to read these really complex plays that were too high of a level for me to read, and where I needed to use the explanatory notes for every single line to understand what was being said. But now, as a far more mature reader (ahem), I was able to basically sail through without much problem understanding what the players were saying. I think this will be a funny play to watch, with plenty of hilarious scenes and hopefully it will be easy to understand (although I'm sure there will be plenty of errors as a viewer, as the title suggests). I think a little bit of background helps to ground this play in the necessary suspension of disbelief, to know that it comes from a Greek form and from the Greek playwright Plautus, which helps to explain why neither twin starts to suspect what's going on or why nobody notices any differences in clothing or accent or anything. I actually really enjoyed reading this, and can't wait to see it. (I had a goal to read five Shakespeare plays this year, and this was the first one. I'm going to try and read a few more before we go to England as well.)

Book #56: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard

I vividly remember hearing about this play when I was a senior in high school, in AP English, reading Hamlet and my teacher talking about this play written about Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two mostly insignificant characters in the original play. I have meant to read it ever since, and I finally requested it at the library and got around to it. I was surprised by how short it was (of course, plays do seem pretty short when printed) and it only took me about an hour to get through. I know that it is an ironic comedy, where we see the action of the tragedy of Hamlet through the eyes of two pretty hilarious and unintelligent characters, but that is the problem with reading a play. It is meant to be staged, meant to be viewed and experienced in an entirely different way--so it really isn't fair to judge a play by reading it, similar to Shakespeare's plays. I could see a lot of the funny parts as I was reading, but I imagine it would have been funnier if I'd been watching it. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern can't tell themselves apart from each other, and are like two sides of the same coin. They are summoned to come help Hamlet and find out what's wrong with him, but they spend most of their time deliberating about which way to go to find him, and when Hamlet comes across them, they don't know what to say or just watch him as he walks past. They are extremely passive when it comes to their fate and get thrown into situations without even knowing where they are--and they have no idea that they are heading for their own deaths (although we, as the audience, do, from the ending of Hamlet). There was a lot of self-aware commentary on acting and actors, which is appropriate for a play and for the people acting in it, but not all that interesting to me since I have no involvement in that world. Overall, it was an interesting look at the play, and made me want to go re-read Hamlet, and I wish I could see it staged live because I bet it would be a lot more enjoyable.

Book #32: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

I hadn't planned to buy this, but I decided to last week and thanks to the real-life magic of Amazon Prime, I had it in two days. I sat down and read it in just a couple of hours--it moved really quickly since it was a play script and not a traditional novel. And that right there is the main difference between this and the other books--the format interferes with your total immersion into the story like you get from the books. But I think it is really important to not let that get in the way of the enjoyment of this--since it is a script and you're not actually getting the real, full experience from seeing it as a play. I have read several places that it is amazing on the stage--or at least better than just reading it. As much as I wish I could see the play sometime, that seems unlikely unless it comes to Dallas, or at least the U.S., so reading the script will have to be all we get.

I didn't really realize that this script/play wasn't actually written by Rowling. It was written by Jack Thorne, the director of the play--although she helped to come up with the story. I feel like some places it does read like fanfiction--like when Severus Snape shows up again, and a few times whenever Albus and Scorpius refer back to specific small events that happened during Harry Potter's time at Hogwarts that seem unlikely that they would have known about (but everyone reading the books knows every one of them). I didn't love how Ron was portrayed as a total joke/jokester, never saying anything serious or being taken seriously--I feel like that was taking his role from the books wayyyy too far and I liked him less for it. I thought it was a little too neat at the end to have Harry and all his pals rushing off into danger again--but it was kind of satisfying. AND I really didn't like all the crazy effects of the time-travel--it didn't seem to jive with the time-travel from the books, where they don't make any changes but just see what already happened from a different perspective. This was totally different from that, and I think that's where it doesn't seem like Rowling wrote it. I did like seeing some human sides to Harry as a grown-up and the real-life things he's struggling with, and I liked seeing the relationship between Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Ginny as grown-ups. And also Malfoy! As a multi-faceted character! With a son who is totally unlike him! I loved that.

Overall, a pretty satisfying read that is pretty much required reading for any Potter fan. Maybe not the best ever, but necessary.

Book #89: An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde

I read a bit of Wilde back in the day before college, even, but I really haven't revisited him much since. (Except for going to see his grave in Paris! Picture below.) But I have always meant to get around to reading more than just The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest, both of which I really enjoyed in the past. In reading An Ideal Husband, I was surprised by how funny and sarcastic and yet how deep this play was. The play is about Robert Chiltern, a supposedly perfect man to everyone--with a perfect record in politics and a wife who almost worships him--who has a secret from the past come back to bite him in the form of blackmail. He gets help from his friend, the resolute dandy Lord Goring, who helps him to figure out what to do and how to save his reputation and his marriage. (I absolutely loved the character of Lord Goring--he's totally cut from the cloth of Percy in The Scarlet Pimpernel, the secretly intelligent and philosophical man who acts like he's only interested in fashion and shallow things.) And through this story, you get bombarded with hilarious quotes about how silly and shallow people are, and then also with these serious, deep quotes about how love truly works and how important charity and forgiveness are to relationships and love.

Some of my favorite quotes, both silly and serious:

"It is not the perfect, but the imperfect, who have need of love. . . . All sins, except a sin against itself, Love should forgive. All lives, save loveless lives, true Love should pardon." (Act II)
"Other people are quite dreadful. The only possible society is oneself." (Act III)
"What is unfashionable is what other people wear. . . . Just as vulgarity is simply the conduct of other people." (Act III)
"Like all stout women, she looks the very picture of happiness." (Act II)
"All I do know is that life cannot be understood without much charity, cannot be lived without much charity. It is love, and not German philosophy, that is the true explanation of this world, whatever may be the explanation of the next." (Act II)

Things work out in the end for Robert Chilton and his wife, and they understand each other much better and how to love each other better in the end. In the end, everyone understands better about what it really means to be an "ideal" husband--and that it's more desirable to be "real." So all's well that ends well in this story. I found the Rupert Everett version of it is available for streaming on Netflix, so I may watch that tonight while Tommy works. And I want to look for more of his works at the library to read!

And in closing, a picture of Oscar Wilde's tomb with its hundreds of lipstick kisses all over it. I can't believe I've actually been there. (And I just looked it up on Wikipedia and apparently we were some of the last people to see it like this--it said in 2011 (the year we went) they cleaned off his tomb and put a glass wall around it to keep people from defacing it. Awesome.)