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 thoughts on “Least Popular Works, Demonstrated

  1. 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!

  2. 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.

  3. 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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