Where should I start with Shakespeare? I only remember Romeo & Juliet from HS. And what editions do I buy...

i'm guessing you mean: why is cleopatra being portrayed by a black woman and not a descendent of the (hellenic) ptolomies?
for myriad reasons you probably already know.

>reading his plays
>not watching them
what for?

It's been known that that is the best way to enjoy them since the 18th century

I suggest Julius Caesar as a good start. You should already know the plot, so its easier to focus on the writing. Plus Ides of March is coming up

The Riverside Shakespeare is a good complete works

We wuz pharaohs n shit

Someone ejacutaled on this girl's Macbeth copy lmao

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How's the The Norton Shakespeare (complete works)? Does it have notes?

Thanks for sharing that with everyone

Harold Bloom is shit, though. Their Shakespeare analysis are superficial.

I liked this Shakes video

youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s

i like to use this video to demonstrate how much an actor's choices can change the sense of the text
m.youtube.com/watch?v=qYiYd9RcK5M

I think Romeo & Juliet is a good place to start. Just remember this advice: If theater you will read as a naive boy, remember to imagine all the stuff. And what the people dare to say at plays, be sure to check with what they've done.

If you like Romeo & Juliet, read these that I highly recommend: Ricardo II, The Taming of the Shrew, Julius Caesar, Titus Andronicus, Hamlet, Macbeth, Otello, King Lear.
Avoid Measure for Measure and Henry VIII... those are utter shit.

The rest... I've haven't read them, so I can't give you any opinion.

this should be good:
what's wrong with measure for measure

The best advice I can give you is to approach Shakespeare from Shakespeare. Don't read pretentious "analysis" or brainlet "conclusions" from "critics" that didn't even read the plays with the proper attention. If you have doubts about the meaning of the plays, just re-read them... everything is there to us to catch as reserarchers of the human soul.

Honestly, I agree.

It reminds me of a scene from George III, when the Prince of Wales is reading to an ill George, and William Pitt remarks about how he read Shakespeare to his father when he was ill.

Don't worry about the lofty analysis and the pretentiousness of it all, read and enjoy the English language at its absolute finest.

In my opinion, it's a very complicated tale about nothing important. It's a play based on a tricky and a very specifical circumstance: what if a cleric has an animal desire for a noun. It doesn't explore the deep truth behind an action like that (rape desire), and it doesn't work as a "just for laughs" play either because it simply isn't funny. I found Measure for Measure as a very interesting play, but it definitely has lack of theme and tone problems, and for those reasons I wouldn't recommend it to discover Shakespeare.

For me, it's Othello.

How the fuck a moor end like a captain in fuckin' Venize? Why on earth this same moor would fight against his own race as a warrior in the Italian army?
It brokes me everytime I think in all those Otello's sad histories about how he hates himself that much for being a moor, that he pretends he isn't one fighting under a "purer" and a foreign flag.

Definitely Otello is god-thier user.

>William Shakespeare was the son of John Shakespeare, an alderman and a successful glover (glove-maker) originally from Snitterfield, and Mary Arden, the daughter of an affluent landowning farmer.[14] He was born in Stratford-upon-Avon and baptised there on 26 April 1564. His actual date of birth remains unknown, but is traditionally observed on 23 April, Saint George's Day.[15] This date, which can be traced to a mistake made by an 18th-century scholar, has proved appealing to biographers because Shakespeare died on the same date in 1616.[16][17] He was the third of eight children, and the eldest surviving son.[18]

I'd start with a BBC radio recording of one of the tragedies. Branagh did a good one of Hamlet (linked below).

youtube.com/watch?v=HbdcD5SAD7Q

I thought you were only doing this if they had any Jewish ancestry. Otherwise, what's the point?

>what if a cleric has an animal desire for a noun
Was it at least a Latin noun? I've always had a thing for the fifth declension myself.

Actually, Shakesphere was a black woman.

Hot

What are the best individual editions (preferably hardcover)?

yale press prints are compact, minimalist, clearly formatted, and very neat on the shelf

Can you open one of them at a random page and post a pic?

i can't, most of my books are in storage
ebay.com/itm/Shakespeare-Sonnets-The-Yale-Shakespeare-Edward-Bliss-Reed-VTG-1956-Collectible-/113669163404
there's an example, though
been oop simce the 60s i think. i find them in used bookstores and antique shops all the time, usually in better condition than the ones i just saw on ebay

I find the plays online and print them. I have my own "complete Shakespeare" in a 4" ringed binder.

this is the way, especially if you have access to a university library printer
you can copy-paste into a word doc and then esit and format as you like