'Take choice of all my library'... The #MyPlayToday Project
Hello again.
A few weeks ago, I handed in my little 7716 word baby of a dissertation. Ever since, I have been reminiscing about all of those 'not on the reading list' books that, for the past three years, have been amassing in a poor neglected pile. Top of the list (in fact, what I've been trying to do alongside my degree) is actually more of a project than a book.
Being the cliché-of-a-Literature-student that I am, I would estimate I have read roughly two thirds of Shakespeare's plays and seen probably around half. But I've always wanted to read Shakespeare's complete works and write about them as I went. Initially I had gone roughly chronologically, appreciating the tenuous nature of this method and indulging in some heavy common-placing of my own; noting down quotations I really loved along the way. However, that tide of degree reading always swept up my interest and I made it through to the late 1590s and no further... (side note - if you are one of those people that can genuinely balance degree work and reading for pleasure, you officially have a daily beauty in your life that makes me ugly.)
So, feeling the post-dissertation abyss of free time caving before me, I'm once again taking up the project but in a slightly different way. I had discounted restarting the chronological way and there are far too many 'Henry's to contemplate attacking the works alphabetically (7 in a row? It wouldn't even follow the line of succession. No no no). Instead I've chosen to be fortune's fool and leave myself at the mercy of a lucky dip. A lucky, Bardy, dip.
In a bid to push myself (read: train myself) into reading faster than I typically do, I'm also going to aim to finish whichever play I draw within the same day that I draw it. A play in a day. Not only this, but to record here exactly what that play has spoken to me on the day that I read it.
What does living with, or inside, the play do to my day? And what will my day do to the play?
This post is a little too brief and introductory to properly engage with the deeper reasons why I would start this project, one of half diary and half devotion, in homage to Shakespeare. I'm hoping (and I'm sure) the plays will give a tongue to let me speak that language. For now, to business that I love.
#MyPlayToday
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