James J. Cudney IV

Author Spotlight: William Shakespeare

As part of our Author Alert series, we’re now on our fourth week and I’ve completed 500 reviews on the ThisIsMyTruthNow blog site. This week, I’ve selected… William Shakespeare!

 

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William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616) wrote 37 plays and 157 sonnets. You can find more about him on Goodreads or Wikipedia.

shakes.jpg

He married Anne Hathaway and had 3 children. She looks great for being nearly 500 years old, but given she’s an actress, she probably has tons of people taking care of her! Oh… that’s right, it’s a different Anne Hathaway. Silly me. I get them confused a lot… probably because I’ve read at least 21 out Shakespeare’s 37 plays. See below for links to all the reviews. I should probably keep on reading…. which one…. feel free to suggest a good one I’ve missed. It’s been a while and although a re-read might work, something “new” is even better.

  1. Sonnets (1590 – 1610)
  2. Richard III (1591)
  3. The Taming of the Shrew (1593)
  4. Comedy of Errors (1594)
  5. Romeo & Juliet (1595)
  6. A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1595) — would love to do a re-read some day
  7. Richard II (1595)
  8. The Merchant of Venice (1596)
  9. Much Ado About Nothing (1598)
  10. As You Like It (1599)
  11. Julius Caesar (1599)
  12. Hamlet (1600) — favorite tragedy
  13. The Winter’s Tale (1600) — least favorite of all!
  14. Twelfth Night (1601) — favorite comedy
  15. Measure For Measure (1603)
  16. Othello (1603)
  17. King Lear (1603)
  18. Macbeth (1606)
  19. Antony and Cleopatra (1606)
  20. The Tempest (1610)
  21. Cymbeline (1611)
  22. Henry VIII (1613)

 

I adore Shakespeare and took a 4 month course on him in college (many years ago). Saturday mornings 9 to 12… some days, I wasn’t sober enough to have a lot of input, and I think my grade showed it. It was the only class where I didn’t have at least an A-. Very disappointed in myself. Now you probably are too!

I also love the movie Shakespeare in Love. Have you ever seen it? I wonder if that is representative of who he really was… I might have fallen in love myself. And then there’s Shakespeare in the Park.

To see the actual author page and all the reviews, click here. All 20+ reviews I’ve completed are there…

The Cat Who series I adore has a book with Shakespeare in the title by Lilian Jackson Braun.

What’s your favorite thing about Shakespeare? What other things have you seen / read about Shakespeare that weren’t actually his own writing?

 

About Me

I’m Jay and I live in NYC. By profession, I work in technology. By passion, I work in writing. Once you hit my site “ThisIsMyTruthNow” at https://thisismytruthnow.com, you can join the fun and see my blog and various site content. You’ll find book reviews, published and in-progress fiction, TV/Film reviews, favorite vacation spots and my own version of the “365 Daily Challenge.” Since March 13, 2017, I’ve posted a characteristic either I currently embody or one I’d like to embody in the future. 365 days of reflection to discover who I am and what I want out of life… see how you compare! Each month, I will post a summary of a trip I’ve taken somewhere in the world. I’ll cover the transportation, hotel, restaurants, activities, who, what, when, where and why… and let you decide for yourself if it’s a trip worth taking. Feel free to like, rate, comment or take the poll for each post. Tell me what you think. Note: All content is my original creation and copyrighted to me, but the graphics and images were linked from other sites and belong to them. Many thanks to their original creators.

29 comments

  1. I took Shakespeare writing in class in high school and we watched Shakespeare in Love! It was pretty fantastic! Have you seen the Romeo and Juliet version with Leo and Claire Danes? Another favorite of mine and then there’s also O which is a very modern version of Othello with Julia Stiles and Mekhi Phifer. I hope one of your author spotlights is Geoffery Chaucer because I can’t think of Shakespeare without thinking of Chaucer hahaha

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

    • Haha! I will probably get to Chaucer at some point. I’m trying to do authors with books wherever I’ve read at least 3 or 4 of their novels… so I can do more with it. I wanted to go on and on in this post about Shakespeare, but I kept it simple. Maybe too light. 🙂 I saw O but not R&J! Loved O tho.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  3. Fantastic post! Teaching Shakespeare is one of my favorite parts of my British Lit classes every semester especially since we get to advance past Romeo and Juliet (as much as I do love those two)!! I teach that class twice a week at 8 am….ugh…and I have hungover college kids taking it on a Monday and a Wednesday, lol! I guess partying in college is not just on the weekends anymore 🙂 I’m impressed you made it through your class with such a good grade; these poor kids can barely grunt.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

      • It’s 8:15 technically, but yes, their parents are likely at work, and they should be used to it since most high schools here begin at 7:15 😐😕
        It’s a 4 month British lit class, and it isn’t until around the midterm mark I get to the Bard. I always start with the Anglo Saxon period and move forward. Amazing how many “know” Beowulf because they saw the movie, lol! Yes, R&J seems to be a high school standard, so I’m partial to switching off and doing Hamlet or Lear alternating semesters. I’m not sure either. So many have an excellent work ethic and easily get those As, others try their best and do well, and the rest are just looking for the credits to graduate. That’s my pet peeve…

        Liked by 2 people

      • Interesting how it hasn’t actually changed much with the interest and non-interest. Part of me would really like to design curriculum that help educate people across the board about life, rather than force certain types of requirements. With literature, if you’re not an English major, there should be a core set of things to review and discover. Always surprising when there’s such disinterest in it. Reading can help you achieve nearly anything. What a good share! 🙂

        Liked by 1 person

  4. I have read the adapted versions.. Not Shakespeare’s works.. I am not well versed with English literature but I liked Merchant of Venice… I know it’s not what you asked… But just to put my 2 cents in…

    Liked by 2 people

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  6. I, like you, took an undergrad course in Shakespeare, and last spring semester I had the wonderful opportunity to have a British actor who was performing in a modern dress Romeo and Juliet (played a total of 5 roles including Romeo and his mother! The fact that he could remember all those lines blew my mind.)at our university. He did a three hour hands-on-workshop for my 25 students and linked up to the fact that it was a writing course by constantly referring to what a writer Shakespeare was. The students did acting exercises which culminated into four person skits, then I assigned a review (one of the kinds of writing I throw into the class) on the stage performance which counted as part of their writing course grade. To use a cliche, “A good time was had by all!”

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  13. Hi James,
    I really do try to like Shakespeare’s play and not quiver in my boots. I’m much more partial to his sonnets.
    Two years ago, I wrote a series of letters to Dead Poets as my theme for the 2016 A-Z April Blogging Challenge and S was Shakespeare. As luck would have it, S just happened to land on the 400th anniversary of his death I think it was. Anyway, I had a bit of fun with it: https://beyondtheflow.wordpress.com/2016/04/23/s-shakespeare-time-travels-four-hundred-years-1616-2016-atozchallenge/
    Best wishes,
    Rowena

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    • Hi, Rowena.

      I love your name. I’m not sure if I told you, but that’s the name of one of the characters in my first books.

      What a fun-sounding post. I’ve opened the link and will look over it later today. Off to the gym and then brunch, but will be back online this afternoon. Have a great day.

      j

      Like

      Reply

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