When you set out to read Shakespeare chronologically, you run into a few problems.
First, and most obvious, no one can agree on the correct chronology for Shakespeare.
Did he write the cycle of Henry VI plays first?
Or did he write The Taming of the Shrew? Or, should we say, The Taming of A Shrew?
What about that lost Hamlet script? Or the King Leir script?
And if he did write the Henrys first, was part one actually a prequel, George Lucas style? Or did he deliberately write in sequence?
Interesting, if a bit frustrating, to ponder.
But things become more frustrating the deeper you dig.
What about all of those plays that aren’t in the established canon?
What about Edmund Ironside? Didn’t know about that one, did you?
Or what about Cardenio?
Love’s Labour’s Won?
You don’t know about these plays because scholars, critics, and academics have professional incentive to edit history.
They talk of plays by unknown writers, not ascribed to anybody, but contain the DNA of Shakespeare’s style. They contend that Shakespeare must have stolen from these unknown writers. Indeed, theft and liberal borrowing was commonplace in the world of Elizabethan theatre. But why don’t we know those writers when we know the others?
Why don’t we reach for the simplest and most logical conclusion?
Shakespeare wrote them.
His early works, if we take them to be such, display the young poet cutting his teeth and learning his craft.
But, oh no.
They’re not ‘Shakespearian’ enough.
So they’re razed from “the canon”.
And what of those works that have the name William Shakespeare ascribed to them? Lies and misinformation, apparently. At least according the the academics.
The same academics who want to read feminist Shakespeare, environmentalist Shakespeare, queer theory Shakespeare.
The academics who talk of the Bard self-consciously poking fun at generic stage conventions.
Shakespeare was of his time.
But academics continue to take him out of his time and pedestal the man.
The Bard wouldn’t have been critiquing the revenge tragedy genre with Titus Andronicus, for example, when the genre was fresh to the stage.
More likely, he was writing a play that would sell.
He was hoping to cash in on the flavour-of-the-month, and put a few bottoms on the hard wood seats of The Globe.
And that he did. With the help of a few collaborators here and there.
What happens when you read the introduction to a classic work before reading the work itself?
You pollute your understanding of the work.
You make it impossible to appreciate the thing of it.
You reduce whatever pleasure you might have gained from it.
You start reading it through whatever specific lens one biased professor who has spent twenty years talking about the patriarchy in the Elizabethan theatre wants you to think.
Here’s how you read great books:
- Skip the introduction.
- Ignore footnotes as much as possible, except where meaning is unclear.
- Read from your belly.
Bring your soul to the work.
If it helps, pretend you’ve just had a glass of red wine.
Pretend you’re a child again.
Go with glee.
And an open heart.
Remember that whatever reaction you have is correct.
You’re a genius and you contain insights, unique insights, if only you trust and give yourself permission.
Give yourself permission to say and think silly things.
Every response, no matter how small, no matter how insignificant you feel it is, is relevant, and could blossom into something powerful.
We don’t know what we think or feel about something until we write about it or verbalise it.
So put pen to paper.
Muddy the margins with your ink.
Become your own critic.