Full of enthusiasm for my lockdown project of reading The Complete Works of Shakespeare, I wandered blindly on to play number 5.

Some time later I stumbled back out, wondering if there’s any wriggle-room on those do not drink bottle warnings, as I felt the need for some kind of absolute cleansing. Should I sit in a circle of sage and set fire to it, maybe? Call a haunted looking priest with a bell and the ability to chant all night until the demons are gone?

I settled for a cup of tea and worked out what to write on my review. All I could summon up was this.

5. Titus Andronicus

Oh, that is just disgusting!

0/10. Or less

Then I moved on, and boy, wasn’t that a good idea, because this:

6. The Comedy of Errors

Now, I reckon there’s an untold story behind the writing of this play. I think Shakespeare’s mate’s went to see Titus Andronicus and promptly arranged an intervention.

“Dude, are you ok? You really need help, man.”

And then they made him talk to someone for a very long time.

And then they got him laid.

Because, hurrah, hurrah, The Comedy of Errors, which was a joy.

Basically, there’s two sets of twins, so quadruple the opportunities for mistaken identity. Works like a charm. Lots of rhyming couplets worthy of Fezzik and Inigo in The Princess Bride. And some pretty good rants, and who doesn’t love one of those?

Also, I discovered this wonderful description of a guy called Pinch: “a hungry lean-faced, a mere anatomy, a mountebank, a threadbare juggler, and a fortune-teller, a nerdy, hollow-eyed, sharp-looking wretch, a living-dead man.”
I couldn’t wait to look down my nose at someone and call them, “a mere anatomy” with withering disdain. That would be winning at life, that would.

Ooh, ooh, best bit was NOBODY DIED!!

7/10, because even Spock the bookmark enjoyed this one, and he has no sense of humour at all.

Still on a high, I continued reading.

7. Two Gentlemen of Verona

This was about two seriously horny Italian men (we all know the sort, we’ve met them on holiday) who were trying to get into some nice girls’ knickers. Trouble is, one of them was a gentlemen and the other was a total shit: needed a punch in the face, at the very least.

Favourite description – “the uncertain glory of an April day”. Marvellous. Makes reading Shakespeare worthwhile.

The impact of this was spoilt, however, by a line on the next page – “These follies…shine through you like the water in an urinal”.
Was that seriously the best he could do? Word to the wise here, Will: quit while you’re ahead.

5/10

8. Love’s Labours Lost

I thought I was doing well. I was handling the language no problem, and rattling through the book at a good pace. But then this. Which was absolutely unintelligible. I genuinely didn’t understand a blithering word.

Shakespeare had apparently written a whole play with the motto why use five words when fifty will do? And, being a bit clever-dicky, had also decided that, word-wise, bigger was better. (FYI, Will, no-one needs to know the meaning of the word Thrasonical. We are never gonna slip that into the conversation)

There’s a poor chap called DULL (which should have been a clue, had I been paying attention, instead of trying not to gouge out my own eyes). When his mate said to him, “Thou hast spoken no word at all this while” he replied, “Nor understood none neither, sir.”

Even the characters are none the wiser!

Will obviously thought this was whip-smart wordplay.

But you know when some brute of a dog nearly bites your leg off in the park, and then his owner claims he’s just playing? Yeah, it’s that kind of wordplay.

1/10 because it also had no plot and a stupid ending.

I’ll admit I was feeling a tad discouraged at this point. Billy Boy had left me shaky and unclean, momentarily uplifted, then dropped back down again and left feeling stoopid.

But tomorrow I was moving on to the big guns – the star-crossed lovers were beckoning. What would Spock make of this, I wondered?