Proposal: Reading Shakespeare's Sonnets

This summer I attended the Teaching Shakespeare Workshop, a month of studying, performing, and teaching Shakespeare. The idea for this project took shape during the last week of the workshop. I propose a group reading of Shakespeare's sonnets, using this blog as a forum for discussion.

Structure
We will read one sonnet each week, going in order from 1 to 154. Every Tuesday an active member, on a rotating basis, will 'host' the discussion, posting the sonnet and some framing questions or observations.  (Update: Every time we finish a rotation, we'll take a week off.)  Perhaps a host will pair the week's sonnet with another text. It's up to you. The following weekend the host will [may optionally] post some concluding remarks.

Participation
Active members will co-author this blog and should commit to being part of the conversation each week through posts and comments. To keep things manageable, active membership will be limited to six or so. (We can arbitrarily change that.) If you need to scale back your participation at any point, you may become an inactive member, hovering at the sidelines and posting comments from time to time. I expect membership to change over the course of this project; it will be fun to bring in new voices along the way.

Critical approach
There's room here for both close attention to the text and for personal reflection. It would be interesting to occasionally bring in secondary criticism, so long as we keep the atmosphere unstuffy and unthreatening. As our different approaches become recognizable, the conversation will take on some of the richness of Slate's TV Club, in which several commentators write to each other as they watch a season of a TV show. I'll be reading from Stephen Booth's edition, which was highly recommended at the summer Workshop.

Let's make it happen
If this sounds like fun, let me know--leave a comment or send me an email at chris.proctor@gmail.com. If you want to start as an inactive member, that's fine too. We'll start up as soon as five or six are on board. And if you know an interesting person who might be interested in joining, by all means invite him or her. I'm looking forward to hearing from you!

-Chris Proctor