Status Updates From Shakespeare: The Complete W...

Partway through Macbeth

Idk what’s wrong with Goodreads saving my updates but I’ve completed:

Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (c. 1599-1601) (10.25.2025)
Romeo and Juliet (1597) (10.27.2025)
Julius Caesar (c. 1599) (10.30.2025)

One of the reasons I decided to read every Shakespeare play is that I had never read Hamlet. Now that I have read Hamlet, I can see why everybody finds it so fascinating. He's definitely one of the Bard's most compelling protagonists, and the the plot is incredible, but it's still a pleasure even when it's not focused on the main plot.

The Two Noble Kinsmen

Homosocial competition between best friends is initiated by incarceration as the condition of possibility for desire and terminated through conveyance of the object of rivalry as though she were a chattel. It is not identical to TGV, but it does bring the wheel full circle insofar as Emilia is not constrained to silence but her conveyance does restore male friendship.

Henry VIII

Somewhat episodic, packing disparate events into one presentation, perhaps of a piece with the romances. It lacks a central protagonist, but coalesces around episodes wherein we wait 'til the king's pleasure be known'--essentially elevating royal aesthetics to the law of the land--sovereign preference as sovereign decision. Thomas More appears very briefly but is deemphasized, limited to office.

"ADR. Back, slave, or I will break thy pate across.
E. DRO. And he will bless that cross with another beating:
Between you I shall have a holy head."
WHEEZE

"Good sister, let us dine, and never fret;
A man is master of his liberty:
Time is their master, and when they see time,
They'll go or come; if so, be patient, sister."
- 'Comedy of Errors', William Shakespear

"I to the world am like a drop of water,
That in the ocean seeks another drop,
Who, falling there to find his fellow forth (Unseen, inquisitive), confounds himself."
- 'Comedy of Errors', William Shakespear

"According to the statute of the town,
Dies ere the weary sun set in the west."
- 'Comedy of Errors', William Shakespear
Not really sure how this is a comedy and not a tradgedy, but I love it.

"But though thou art adjudged to the death
And passed sentance may not be recall'd."
- 'Comedy of Errors', William Shakespear

A Comedy of Errors
Finished: 25/03/2026