When I put the call out to see if there was anyone interested in reading all of Shakespeare's 38 plays in 38 days, I had no idea what kind of response I'd get. I thought that if I could find even one person who was interested in joining in, I'd consider myself lucky indeed.The site went live in mid-February. Within less than two weeks, around 50 people had expressed their interest on the website, and even more had signed up to the Facebook group. Ages ranged from pre-teen to retirement age and I heard from people in at least eight different
countries.
I was astounded. After all, even though the project only lasts a little over five weeks, committing to reading a play a day is nothing to sneeze at!
Reading officially started on March 1st. Since then, the website has been getting over 100 unique visitors a day and there are roughly a dozen of us who communicate regularly through the forum, on Facebook or by e-mail. We have amongst our number a professional actress, a
literature major, a fellow on paternity leave, a special-effects designer, a sculptor, a writer and someone with "the most boring daytime job one could imagine". Several of these people blog
regularly about the plays, sharing opinions, thoughts, background, and tales of professional performance experience. In addition, I hear from someone completely new almost every day.
I'm not surprised that there are some quiet readers out there. If I weren't organising this, I may very well be one of them. For me, one of the most difficult parts of this project is balancing the actual reading with all the other things that need to be done. I seriously underestimated the time I'd need to set aside for administrative tasks like dealing with e-mails, updating the website and keeping the forum free from dodgy spammers. I am just about managing to get the plays
read, but I'm behind on writing, eating, sleeping, laundry and I'm sure my friends think I've been swallowed by the earth.
So, is it worth the madness? Absolutely.
Because we're reading the comedies and tragedies in roughly the order in which they were written, even us non-Shakespeare scholars have been able to catch a glimpse of how Shakespeare develops as a writer. Also, reading the plays in such close succession means that each new play is read with the previous plays fresh in mind. Connections between them leap off the page that never would have occurred to me had there been more of a gap between readings. Finally and foremost, I am getting so much out of reading other people's comments and blogs.
Being part of a diverse community of readers keeps the motivation high and I learn so much more had I been reading on my own.
By the end of the Ides of March ? 15 days into this whirlwind tour of Shakespeare's plays ? we'll have read roughly 340,000 words of Shakespeare. Keeping up is challenging, but not impossible. I'm finding that reading Shakespeare is a skill; it gets easier with
practice. After the first few days, one falls into a rhythm of reading. Personally, I've discovered that at the end of a long day, it is infinitely easier to return to a play than it is to start it. I
now make it a policy to read a bit in the morning ? even if it is just a prologue or one short scene.
Since the project started, some people contacted me to let me know that, even though they aren't going to read all 38 plays, they have made up their own Shakespeare challenges. For example, a commuter is listening to recordings of the plays on the way to work, one new
parent is watching each play on DVD, a couple people have committed to reading all the plays they haven't yet read and one young person is going to the theatre to see a Shakespeare play for the very first time.
I'm delighted by these alternative takes on the project and, of course, anyone and everyone who is interested in reading, watching, listening to or talking about Shakespeare is more than welcome to join in fun and conversation over the upcoming weeks.
--Ingrid (www.shicho.net/38)
