Agenda for 2021

I’ve said that I want to continue adding to and correcting the blog. I have three main areas of interest.

1. In 2020, along with reading the plays, I listened to the complete set of Arkangel recordings. In 2021, I want to listen to some additional recordings and note any further insights into the plays they provide. Mainly this means listening to the 18 or 19 plays in the BBC Radio Shakespeare series, recently re-released in 4 handy anthologies. These are pretty sparse when it comes to the early plays, but they’re wonderfully produced audio dramas. And of course I’ll try to take in other productions as well, but I don’t get out much, and I love audio to distraction.
   
2. I want to at least begin the process of studying Shakespeare’s contemporaries. I had a course in same as an undergraduate and still have the anthology. Between that and two more recent anthologies, I’ll have plenty of texts on hand to start with. The recent texts are a Norton anthology edited by David Bevington and a volume of “[Possibly] Collaborative Plays” edited by Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen, as a companion volume to their RSC Shakespeare. The RSC is one of my favorite one- volume Shakespeares; my other two are Norton and Bevington. So how could I go wrong?
   
3. I want to re-visit what I wrote about Shakespeare’s life, revise it as needed, and complete it. — or, after reflecting on it, abandon the effort. I’m neither an historian nor a biographer, and I have no access to primary sources, so I don’t have anything original to contribute in that department except my own opinions. However, that being said, one of the surest ways to learn something is to try to explain it to someone else, so for that reason alone it may be worth my while to write down my thoughts about this, even if they’re not likely to benefit anyone else.
   

That’s what I’m thinking as I look ahead to the coming year. I don’t have a schedule. I signed up for the Dickens 2021 group (formed as a successor to Shakespeare 2020), which aims to read all of Dickens’ novels next year. That will be demanding enough. But I’ll have some spare time to devote to the blog anyway, because I’m not blogging about Dickens. (Did I mention that I adore Dickens almost as much as Shakespeare? Almost. The writer, not the man. The man was pretty awful to his family. But I am not blogging about him. I am not.)

First up on the Shakespeare’s contemporary list: Locrine. I’ve never read it, so it should be interesting. (Two of the plays in the Bate/Rasmussen anthology, Arden of Faversham and Edward III, are ones I’ve already “blogged,” and I won’t be doing them again just now.)