Dtek Industries

Call me quixotic, but the knight errant is calling me. Who's in?

The Goal: read Don Quixote by Cervantes before July 1st, and post discussion prompts, summaries, vocabularly lists as I go along.

The Book: I have the Edith Grossman translation with an introduction by Harold Bloom. (I read that introduction and Cervantes own "Prologue" and, man, am I jazzed!)

Of course, there is a number of plays missing here. Othello, Macbeth and especially King Lear, and, yes, Romeo & Juliet, are must reads. Jag has offered to let us come along with his classes during the next school year as they read Romeo & Juliet and Othello, which is great. Lear and Macbeth will have to come by other means, I suppose. But here is Antony & Cleopatra, and of course, Hamlet. Have at it.

I am borrowing Bloom's phrase here for this grouping, "The Problem Plays." Another critic would probably place them in the Comedies. Let's see why Bloom spearates them.

Bloom calls it the Henriad: from Richard II through Henry IV to Henry V. Let's feast with Falstaff.

The Comedies. Have fun.

Nietzsche says that this play should be called "Marcus Brutus," and Bloom agrees that the focus of the play is Brutus, though he says it's not unusual that Shakespeare should name the play for the greater historical figure in it. Whatever the case, here we may begin discussing it... (Keep an eye on those Plebians.)