Aaron Krerowicz read all 38 Shakespeare plays during COVID, analyzed them and ranked them according to personal preference. Nowhere is he swayed by popularity or what he should say (King Lear doesn’t make the top list, for example) and the result is a refreshing look at Shakespeare’s canon in total.
I’d never read Shakespeare outside of school. My freshman high school English class studied ROMEO AND JULIET (for which I composed my opus 1, a piano solo that I’m still rather proud of), my sophomore class covered MACBETH, and I scrutinized HAMLET last fall for a doctoral seminar – all three of which I struggled with, but ultimately enjoyed. And so, inspired by Keenan and those three plays, I bought a used copy of THE RIVERSIDE SHAKESPEARE on Amazon for $12 and embraced my new-found quarantine-induced free-time.
Lots of gems. My favorite is the entry on Macbeth, which points directly to Patrick Stewart:
If MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING is the original romcom, then MACBETH is the original horror. (The 2010 film starring Patrick Stewart did a fantastic job of taking the horror this play must have for audiences four hundred years ago and translating it for a modern audience.)
See the full listing here.
Basement Whatever 