Introducing the #Shakespeare40 Challenge

I’m turning 40.

I’m turning 40.

I’M TURNING 40.

How much ridiculousness can be credited to that single thought?

I get it, Dylan Thomas. Some men have forked no lightning. Do not go gentle into that good night. I get it, seriously.

But, frankly, I can’t be bothered to identify an amazingly inspirational quest to assuage some underlying mid-life crisis. Frankly, there are too many Netflix box sets that I have yet to watch. I haven’t even seen one episode of Peaky Blinders. I am too lazy to go on some trans-global adventure, and I’m not too sure that the kids would be too happy with that anyway (they’re not coming with me, which is probably a bit mean, all things told).

So how about this.

I really quite like Shakespeare. Yes, it’s middle class to like Shakespeare.  Yes, it’s a bit poncy. Some plays are a bit boring. Some are a lot boring. Some are frankly incomprehensible. I’m not sure that all the plays are even put on any more. Bad Shakespeare – that can be SERIOUSLY bad. Histories that feel like an age. Comedies that don’t raise a smile. Tragedies where the audience feels like joining the body count on stage somewhere near the end of Act Two, let alone waiting for the inevitable bloodbath of Act Five scene Seven.

But – in my limited experience – a good Shakespeare production can be absolutely amazing, uplifting, enthralling, shocking, frightening, life-affirming, enlightening and a whole lot of emotions beside.

I studied Shakespeare at school, and at university. I even appeared in a “fateful” performance of Hamlet whilst at Cardiff University. I played Fortinbras (who famously only appears in the very last scenes) and also various “guards”. I burnt a hole in my costume by smoking on the fire escape. The eight-foot cardboard cross collapsed into the grave during Ophelia’s funeral scene. One of my friends was so bored by the five-hour, uncut version that he conspired to break the leg off his chair during Act three and sprawl on the floor so he could escape. Many of my friends who came to watch didn’t even bother with such duplicitousness and just upped and left before it was over. But… but… but… I absolutely loved the experience of performing in a play. Watching plays, since then, always transported me into the camaraderie of the cast. Being in the audience I could and would vicariously become part of the acting company.  

How’s this for a challenge, then: watching every play that Shakespeare wrote, over one decade.

The idea came to me at my 40th birthday party. I was dressed as William Shakespeare. My wife, Michelle, was dressed as a monk, under duress (but, to be fair, being a good sport by joining in). We had two Juliets, a Titania, a Bottom and a fair number of knights and assorted mediaeval types. The cake was shaped to look like the Globe Theatre. (It had taken Michelle eight hours to decorate it and was topped with a thatch of Cadbury’s Flake). By chance, my 40th birthday party happened to coincide with the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, on April 23, 1616. April 20, 3 days earlier, had been my 40th birthday itself and here I was dressed as the bard himself.

The cake that started it all (kind of)

In short, there was a lot of Shakespeare going on. The quest idea came to me. It sounded like something that not many people would have done. But at the same time, it didn’t sound too difficult. Perfect!

The rules

I needed some rules:

1. Every Shakespeare play – all 38 of them (oh, I wish there had been 40 of them. That would have been deliciously symmetrical.)
2. Performed live – not a film or live broadcast
3. Original text – not modern language, adaptation or “interpretation”
4. I must watch all of them by the end of my 40s. So that’s roughly four per year.
5. Can be amateur or professional
6. Can be outdoors or indoors

“You should watch them all within a year, that would be a real challenge,” I was told. Yes, you’re missing the point. This is NOT that kind of quest. That sounds like a real ball-ache and I’m lazy. Plus, it’s going to cost a few quid and I need to spread that out over a longer period.

I grabbed my copy of The Complete Works of Shakespeare to find out what I was letting myself in for.

Sixteen comedies.

Ten histories.

Twelve tragedies.

So where to start?