Progress Report: 2025
less Shakespeare, more Anne Boleyn
This educational endeavor started with the intention of simply reading one Shakespeare play a month for one year. I chose 12 plays, a mixture of some I’d read before and wanted to revisit and classics/noteables I’d never interacted with at all. Though I fudged the dates a bit (sometimes starting a new play the second week of a month and spilling into the next), I nonetheless read 12 plays over the course of the 2024 calendar year.
2025? A whopping six.
Who do I blame? Anne Boleyn, of course.
While Shakespeare pulled me back into my books, reminded me of my roots as a literature major, pushed me back into theatres and had me researching his life, his family, this odd-as-hell question of “Who Wrote Shakespeare?” (classist, end of story)… Anne Boelyn took hold of me and didn’t let go. Oh, she’s had a hold on me since childhood, but she really dug all six fingers (eleven in total) into me this time. (Just kidding, she only had five fingers, ten in total.) I found myself falling further down the Boleyn faction rabbithole, deep diving into family researching archives trying and hoping I could trace my ancestry back to her somehow—a cousin a million times removed, related to an aunt, something. (After spending months on this project, my manager drops in casual conversation in a weekly 1:1 that he just found out he’s descended from Mary Boleyn via Catherine Carey. * jealous eye roll *) And so anyhow, while I didn’t meet my Shakespeare goals for the year, I do feel closer to Anne and the Tudor court than ever before.
Needing a break from the 1500s, I decided to cross a very different course off my Great Courses learning list. My favorite lecture series from 2025 was hands down King Arthur: History and Legend with Professor Dorsey Armstrong. I loved her as a lecturer: engaging, so freaking smart, and an amazing storyteller. As I’ve been researching family history, I’ve also found myself more curious about medieval England and the Norman Conquest. Sure, I learned a fair amount in undergrad (looking at you, Dr. Wheeler) and graduate school, but that was from more of a literary approach rather than a historical. I’ve loved The Canterbury Tales since high school, but after a medieval theatre class I took in grad school, I’d sworn of medieval litearture (dear god those mystery plays bored me out of my skull and right into a B+…). But I’d always loved Middle English, wished I were more adept with Old English, and wanted to make more space for those language studies at some point. Dr. Armstrong’s course catapulted me even further back in time, and I spent the last few months of 2025 in lecture series centered more around medieval England than early modern, which was a fun change of pace.
Here are the courses I took and books I read in 2025:
Courses
(The Great Courses, presented by The Great Teaching Company)
The History of Christianity in the Reformation Era, Brad S. Gregory
Myths, Lies and Half-Truths of Language Usage, John McWorter
King Arthur: History and Legend, Dorsey Armstrong
The Medieval World, Dorsey Armstrong
The Story of Medieval England: From King Arthur to the Tudor Conquest, Jennifer Paxton
The Medieval Legacy, Carol Symes
Old English Literature: Language as History, Renee R. Trilling
Presented by Natalie Grueninger and Owen Emmerson
The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn (one-week online course)
The Tudors & English History (Books)
The Private Lives of the Tudors, Tracy Borman
Henry VIII and the Men Who Made Him, Tracy Borman
The Wives of Henry VIII, Antonia Fraser
Mary Boleyn: Mistress of Kings, Allison Weir
The Lady in the Tower, Allison Weir
Holbein: The Ambassadors, Tracy Borman
The Waiting Game, Nicola Clark
Hunting the Falcon: Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, and the Marriage That Shook Europe, Julia Fox and John Guy
The Temptation of Elizabeth Tudor: Elizabeth I, Thomas Seymour, and the Making of a Virgin Queen, Elizabeth Norton
The Creation of Anne Boleyn: A New Look at England's Most Notorious Queen, Susan Bordo
The Stolen Crown: Treachery, Deceit, and the Death of the Tudor Dynasty, Tracy Borman
(half of) The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn, Eric Ives
Shakespearean Scholarship
This Is Shakespeare, Emma Smith
Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us about Our Past and Future, James Shapiro
Plays
All’s Well That Ends Well
A Comedy of Errors
Richard III
Romeo and Juliet
Henry VIII
Coriolanius
Observations and Takeaways
I was surprised at how much I enjoyed Richard III. I’d always said Shakespeare’s history plays didn’t interest me, but now that I have the characters more situated in my mind thanks to all my historical reading, I found it surprisingly easy to follow. I was especially in love with the ghost of Margaret of Anjou.
I’ve always hated Romeo and Juliet, and I wasn’t particularly excited about revisiting it. I viewed it through a new lens this time, though, thanks to Emma Smith’s chapter on it in her book, This Is Shakespeare. She had some great insights I was able to carry into my reading and consider it from new perspectives.
The more I read Tracy Borman, the more I am convinced she’s the sharpest, most amazing historian (human) alive. I enjoyed each of her works I read this year, but specifically, I loved The Private Lives of the Tudors and some of the less-talked about subjects she covered, and The Stolen Crown, which I read as part of the Talking Tudors’ book club.
Each minute of listening to Natalie and Owen discuss their Anne Boleyn research in their one-week course was a delight. I’ll be signing up for literally any and everything they do together.
I took a gamble on my last Great Course pick this year, Old English Literature: Language as History, by Renee R. Trilling. Why was I enthralled listening to her break down Old English verbs?? She discussed Beowulf, Sir Gawain, King Arthur, and much more in this course, and I was on the edge of my (car) seat for every minute of it. Approaching the intersection of language and literature was thrilling.
…
I’m starting 2026 off with Helene Harrison’s The Many Faces of Anne Boleyn and Richard II. More soon!