Last year, I read “By Any Other Name” by Jodi Picoult, as part of Mix and Match Mama’s Book Club and I was hooked. The book tells parallel stories about present-day playwright, Melina Green and her ancestor Emilia Bassano, a ward of English aristocrats. The premise is that Emilia was the true author of Shakespeare’s works. While this book is fictional, it is based on a real theory (you can read more about it here).

This book reignited my love for Shakespeare. I’ve read and seen many of his plays, but I haven’t read them all. My personal favorite is Hamlet, but after finishing this book, I want to read them all. I’ve seen a few Shakespeare Challenges online, some people focus on reading all of his works in one year, but I don’t want to limit myself.

This sort of ties into my word of the year, Legacy. I’ve also thought about putting together a classic reading list to go through. When I was growing up, my mom had a beautiful collection of classics in our library. Unfortunately, I don’t have them anymore, but I would love to start collecting the classics, so one day Cassie will be able to enjoy them.

For this challenge, I will be working through each of Shakespeare’s 38 plays. He also has 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other poems. I will try to work in all of these as I go. I also would like to see all of the plays as well, but it might not always work to read and then immediately see the play, so I will have to keep a checklist and watch out for the ones that are coming up in my area. I stumbled upon this cute little book by Allie Ensiri “Shakespeare for Every Day of the Year” and am going to start with it to inspire me as I go.

Instead of doing 38 individual posts for this, I’m going to continue adding to this post as I go, and then I will write a new post quarterly to update you on my progress and thoughts so it doesn’t get too long. For this challenge, I’m going in chronological order, so I’ll start with Two Gentlemen of Verona. I also want to source a beautiful keepsake copy of each play that I can keep in my library forever. I’ve been having fun searching eBay for early copies; surprisingly, they aren’t very expensive. I decided on a hardcover version from 1898. I love the idea that it brings so much history with it, so I will try to continue this as I collect them all!

Update: I finished Two Gentlemen of Verona and loved getting back into Shakespeare. This play was a little annoying because the women were treated terribly. The characters were very immature, so there might be a lot of those types of themes as I get into this. It’s different reading Shakespeare as an adult versus a teenager – my worldview is different. I doubt that I would chase a man who was actively pursuing someone else across the world like Julia did…and then end up marrying him in the end. “Girl! Have you no self-respect?!”

I thoroughly enjoyed searching Two Gentlemen of Verona on TikTok and watching all the fun videos while I was reading the play.

Stay tuned, as I will update this post with my thoughts on my next read, Venus and Adonis. In the meantime, let me know your favorite Shakespeare play.

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