I finally started doing something that I talked about way back in January.

I began my "read more Shakespeare" project. My original plan had been to watch a video/movie of the play (or, go see a production live, if that became possible), and then read it.

But checking what my university library had - well, they had SOME but not as many as I expected, and most were on VHS. And while I still have a VHS player...I would have to haul it back out and hook it up (it is integral with the old Samsung tv I used to use).

And I got all excited, remembering we have a Shakespearean festival. But it seems to be the trend these days for "Shakespeare" festivals to offer one token Shakespeare play, and make up the bulk of stuff with modern comedies like "Welcome to Lesser Tuna" or whatever that one is called. (And while I have no beef, really, with comedies or modernity...I would think if you called something a Someone festival, that you'd focus the majority of your effort on their work or their era. But I guess that's how things go these days...you have to play arrangements of Aerosmith to get people to come to the symphony, and suchlike).

The one near me is offering "Twelfth Night" as its sole Shakespeare offering for the year. While it was not on my list of to-be-reads, I am contemplating actually expanding the idea of "read more Shakespeare" to "read all the Shakespeare plays." Of course, this is now a Life Project, rather than a New Year's Resolution to be Fulfilled in One Year. But I like the idea, in part because it is somewhat quixotic.

So I am going to go see Twelfth Night (well, provided there are still tickets available at a time I'm free to see it) and add it to my list of ones to read.

But the current play - I started with "Julius Caesar."

I kind of chose at random - my original plan was to start with one of the comedies, but this was the one that drew my attention first. (And I kind of know the history, so the plotline is more clear).

I admit, I was a little apprehensive. Because, like some people believe "Math is Hard," I was kind of under the impression (despite having read some, back in high school) that "Shakespeare is Hard" and that I'd need some kind of a commentary or at the very least a gloss for it to make sense to me.

The little editions I have do have a gloss, and a bit of a commentary - though they often say something like, "See note xvi for Cymbeline" instead of giving a full explanation. But most of the time, I'm not needing it. I think I'm midway through Scene IV of Act I.

Shakespeare is not that hard. It makes sense to me! Most of the time when I look something up in the gloss - I'm kind of reading the gloss/notes parallel with the play - the words they provide explanations for, I'm like, "Yeah, I knew that was an alternate sense to the word and I figured it was being used that way here."

So now I feel a little smarter than I thought I was. I can understand "Julius Caesar."

I also am struck by something lots of people comment on about Shakespeare - how he seems to capture a great deal of human experience and human emotion. For example, Cassius' envy of Caesar - his anger, his feeling of being cheated - here is this man that he had to drag out of the Tiber lest he drown - this weakling, with the "falling disease" - and he is being hailed as a god, whereas he, Cassius, is little more than an ordinary citizen.

And while I have never been quite in that position...still, I have seen people that I felt had less skill, or less intelligence, or less SOMETHING than what I had lionized while I was ignored...and I can kind of "feel" Cassius, to use an early 70s locution about it. That sort of burning envy mixed with a sense of injustice...and you see how it could continue to eat at you and corrupt you if you're not a little lazy (like I am) and willing to go, "meh, that's the way the world works sometimes"