What I Read in July 2026 – Some links found verbal form, others remained mere promises, mist, soft approximations of thought.

Soon I will put up a fall schedule for my plunge back into non-Shakespearian plays, from say 1604 to 1614, an exciting stretch. Middleton, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher will dominate. SHAKESPEAREAN The Adventures of Lady Egeria (1585), W. C. – Half tedious, half confounding, this is an early English novel in a modern edition, lovingly edited by Steven Moore as part of his project to read every old novel ever written. For a long stretch it is kind of a prosified Gorboduc, speeches in various rhetorical modes warning rulers against flatterers. And then suddenly the character I though was the main villain is, along with his army, devoured by an enormous flock of ravens. The novel grows more gruesome and Gothic – necromancers, incest, so much incest, what is it with the Elizabethans and incest. The author has no idea what he is doing; his tone becomes increasingly objective, or deadened, as if he is stunned by his own story. An amazing artifact. Antony & Cleopatra (1606?), William…