My first time through King Lear. Some absolutely wonderful prose in there. The story was a touch hard to follow, but I managed okay. 

I think the moral of the story is: "Never never never give your kids their inheritance before you die." Lear certainly did this and earned the contempt and resentment from his two daughters while shafting Cordelia, who could have maybe had used some tact while trying to signal to her father that her older sisters were awful.

I did like that the good son of Gloucester was named Edgar (a certain family name)... Edgar was weird, though. Instead of protesting (or proving) his innocence, he just kinda rolled over too.

Maybe I just thought that the characters were too broad, too cartoonish. The pathos and emotion was good, but it's really all over the map.

But who am I to criticize the Bard, really?

It's picking up a bit, though I think I would find it more powerful if I could actually see Lear's madness and the way it's changing him. I don't see a huge change just in the dialogue--I need it all together. This is the exact reason why I love Hamlet but not actually reading Hamlet. 

Still not my favorite play by Shakespeare. 

My teacher really loves King Lear, so I'm hoping that I do, too. So far, it's kind of boring and Lear is somewhat of an imbecile... Definitely not my favorite Shakespeare play we've read this semester, and I'm hoping it gets powerful or moving or tear-inducing really soon. I guess I'll know by Tuesday!

This was the first play we read in my Shakespeare class here at school. I'd seen the first half of it acted out here on campus (I got sick halfway through, though, so I never did get to see how it ended). I have to say, I did think it was rather clever, and I enjoyed reading it. I really look forward to seeing another film version of it, though, since I think some of the lines would make more sense to me when seen spoken instead of just the way I read it all.

Anyway, it was decent! Not a favorite, but definitely not unenjoyable. Three stars.

As a freshman in high school, I took Brit Lit this year. We read A Tale of Two Cities and Lord of the Flies over the summer, and I absolutely could not stand (or understand) ATTC, and LOTF was not much better. We started off the year with Beowulf, which was decent but a little to predictable for my taste. Next, we read many of the Canterbuy Tales stories, including The Miller's Tale, The Reeve's Tale, and many more; they were okay, but a little too boring. After this, we read A Midsummer Night's Dream; this was too romantic and seemingly unplotted to me. Then we read Macbeth after out midterm, and it was my favorite Shakespeare; it was actually somewhat like a story I would read. I had also seen a play with my friend at the local college beforehand, so we kind of knew what was going on (the play was very interesting). Our final Shakespeare was Hamlet, which I liked more than AMND but less than Macbeth. Then we did a poetry unit, covering the poets Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, and Keats; I really liked When We Two Parted by Byron. Then we read A Modest Proposal by Johnathan Swift, which was very well written, and we are now finishing out the year with Brave New World, which is okay so far; I am starting to like it more.