It depends what you are interested in. Perhaps start with one of the comedies, A Midsummer Night's Dream or Twelfth Night. Then you could try Romeo & Juliet or Much Ado About Nothing. Then you could move to the history plays & finally the tragedies.
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It depends what you are interested in. Perhaps start with one of the comedies, A Midsummer Night's Dream or Twelfth Night. Then you could try Romeo & Juliet or Much Ado About Nothing. Then you could move to the history plays & finally the tragedies.
I recommend Much Ado about Nothing. What a riot! Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet are always crowd pleasers. However, I would save the history plays for last. Sometimes it's hard to keep track of all the nobles in those and it gets confusing.
Speaking of Shakespeare's history plays, I'm teaching an honors seminar next semester and I've decided to do the class on the "miniseries" of history plays that portray the reigns of Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V, Henry VI, Edward IV, and Richard III in sequence! That's very rarely done and I'm excited about it. We will also discuss Shakespeare's use of "poetic license" with England's history.
I wish I could be in your class, Soda.
You would no doubt be my star students! Plus, when we get to Henry VI Part 2 and Dick the butcher says the line "Let's kill all the lawyers", the rest of the students would stare in puzzlement as we sang in unison "Kill 'em tonight!"
I found a book today for $1 in a used book store... Shakespeare Four Comedies... It has The Taming of the Shrew, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice, and Twelfth Night. I'm going to start with a Midsummer Night's Dream... hope I can understand it.:hmm::headscratch:
I suggest you rent (or find on YouTube) performances of those as well. It will probably make it a lot easier to understand them! Plays were meant to be performed. Just make sure it's not one of those "put Shakespeare in another time period" versions before you view it.