As I launch into my first big personal project for 2017, the Roughly Chronological Re-read, I’d like to acknowledge the amount of guesswork that’s going into this. There is no clear chronology for Shakespeare’s plays. I don’t claim to have discovered one. What I have done is read a lot of other people’s suggestions and drawn up a reading order. I don’t claim that my decisions are anything other than arbitrary. You’re welcome to argue the toss with me. I’ll probably argue it with myself as I go.
So here’s the order I’m planning to use:
Week 1: Two Gentlemen of Verona
Week 2: The Comedy of Errors
Week 3: Henry VI Part II
Week 4: Henry VI Part III
Week 5: Titus Andronicus
Week 6: Richard III
Week 7: The Taming of the Shrew
Week 8: Henry VI Part 1
Week 9: Love’s Labours Lost
Week 10: Romeo & Juliet
Week 11: Richard II
Week 12: A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Week 13: King John
Week 14: The Merchant of Venice
Week 15: The Merry Wives of Windsor
Week 16: Henry IV Part 1
Week 17: Henry IV Part 2
Week 18: Much Ado About Nothing
Week 19: As You Like It
Week 20: Henry V
Week: 21: Julius Caesar
Week 22: Hamlet
Week 23: Twelfth Night
Week 24: Troilus & Cressida
Week 25: All’s Well That Ends Well
Week 26: Othello
Week 27: Measure for Measure
Week 28: King Lear
Week 29: Timon of Athens
Week 30: Macbeth
Week 31: Anthony & Cleopatra
Week 32: Pericles
Week 33: Coriolanus
Week 34: Cymbeline
Week 35: A Winter’s Tale
Week 36: The Tempest
Week 37: Henry VIII
Week 38: The Two Noble Kinsmen