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Least Popular Works, Demonstrated
People following me on Twitter watched this play out, but I thought it’d make a blog post as well. Wandering through town today I stopped into a used book store. High up on the top shelf I saw a stack of small books that read “Temple Shakespeare", $15/volume.”
I googled around a bit to see if there was anything special about the collection, then decided to go check it out anyway. What volumes did he have, I asked?
Merry Wives
Richard II
Troilus and Cressida
King John
All’s Well That Ends Well
Measure for Measure
Two Gentlemen of Verona
Titus Andronicus
Rape of Lucrece
Venus and Adonis
…
That certainly says something about the popularity of the works. If you’re gonna pick over a collection volume by volume, you can see the Hamlet and the Dream and such going first…these are the leftovers.
I went with the Venus and Adonis. Fourth edition, 1899. I’ll let you know more about it once I have time.
5 comments:
Richard II was left? I'm surprised! Not just because it's a favorite, but it's also reputed as one of the most poetic--written around the time of A Midsummer Night's Dream and Romeo and Juliet.
Anyway, they still sound like fun!
Poetic indeed. It is written entirely in blank verse. Not a stitch of prose.
I am surprised Henry VIII is not on the list. I always find that one a bit dull.
Good luck with Venus and Adonis. I won't make a secret of the fact that I really can't abide any of the long narrative poems, but Venus is the best of the lot. Lucrece is tedious and appalling; Venus is just tedious. The naughty bits aren't even very naughty. And yet they were both smash hits in their day. Just goes to show you how tastes change, I guess.
I was doing that from memory when I got home, some H8 may have been there, I couldn't say for certain. Richard2 definitely was, though, because when he said Richard I was waiting for him to say 3 and he didn't.
Craig, I went with the V&A primarily because I'm unfamiliar with it and it was such a smash hit. I do try to keep my mind open to learning new stuff. Heck, 3 months ago I was no big fan of the sonnets, and look at the traffic of the blog lately :).
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