#i think someone else has mentioned the norton but no other specific editions

[britneyshakespeare]

I have to say I have loved reading the stories people have shared of old friends and families and memories in the tags. Also every person who felt in response to this post "I would like to read some more soon"!!!!! Makes me so happy. I hope you do and I hope you love it.

As this post has spread out more some of the proportions have slipped from what they started as; like when it was under a thousand votes, complete canon was a more popular answer than zero, and 5-10 was the largest proportion (it was even the majority when it was only a few hundred).

1-4 being the most popular answer doesn't surprise me; it is interesting that some people have begrudged that number as either too high or too low. I meant to change my wording of "would've" to "might've" (but I forgot to do that before I hit post) to reflect that not every school curriculum even does Shakespeare, especially outside of English-speaking countries, but it's still not completely unheard of elsewhere. Also how much Shakespeare you would be exposed to in school can differ wildly in the Anglophone world. I only read two plays in my New England public high school in my standard English classes. Some people took honors or AP classes and were exposed to more than that, but from anecdotal experience when I've asked other US Americans about it, people generally say 1-3, and I added one to that for the outliers.

Also interesting how some people responded to 5 or more plays being considered "hobbyist"—I suppose I forgot that some people's increased exposure to Shakespeare is coincidental (such as being an English major and taking classes that cover him, or having a career in theater where of course you run into his works more) rather than actively sought, which was very much my own case. I do think that 5 is a decent enough number to say, whether you ever read/viewed them entirely voluntarily or not, that you are at least familiar with Shakespeare, since only knowing one or two plays can make those works you do know seem all the stranger and more unique; it helps establish a mental schema of the author that isn't dependent on just a few experiences.

That being said, that this has over 5,000 votes in less than a day, and that about 55% of respondents have read or seen 5 or more plays, is so interesting to me. That 45-55 split on five or more has been pretty steady for awhile now. I'm sure that's not reflective of any general population, but it is a fascinating glimpse into Tumblr's userbase.

I'm curious about people's levels of familiarity; I intend no judgment or elitism and it's absolutely fine not to be a completionist, btw. I didn't think I would've intended to have read them all at age 25; it just sort of happened that after I passed the halfway point in the middle of 2023, I came out of a reading slump and was motivated to finish. Fwiw I consider myself a hobbyist (I am not involved in academia or professional theater) but I realize that that label is usually attributed to people with less experience.

I also have always loved seeing other bloggers' Shakespeare polls where they put certain plays or characters up against each other, but I'm often left wondering if it's really a 'fair' fight all the time if you're putting up something like Hamlet or Twelfth Night against one of the more obscure works, like the Winter's Tale. It's not a grave affront to vote in those polls if you don't know every play, but I am curious about it.

Please reblog for exposure if you vote; I would appreciate it a lot. Also feel free to elaborate on your own Shakespeare journey in tags, comments, reblogs, because I love to hear about other people's personal relationships to literature.