Top Ten Favorite 16th Century Releases

I absolutely love creating top ten lists for the weekly meme Top Ten Tuesday, hosted over at the Broke and the Bookish.  This week's topic, "top ten favorite 2016 releases so far this year," made me gulp.  A quick consultation of my Goodreads stats confirmed that I have not actually read any new releases from this year.  New releases are always difficult to get from the library, and I simply cannot afford to dish out the money for new hardcovers, lovely though they are!  So instead of listing my top ten favorite releases from 2016, I have decided to stray from the topic and list my favorite reads which were hot off the printing press in the 16th century!

1.

Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare

I taught this play to three classes of tenth graders this year, and I think most of them enjoyed it despite being a little scared of Shakespeare when we first started reading.

2.

Edward II by Christopher Marlowe

This play is a-mazing!  Despite his good intentions, Edward II of England is a weak king.  His wife Isabella and her treacherous lover Mortimer plot to overthrow him and get rid of Edward's boyfriend Gaveston, who is what thou might call a gold-digger.  

3.

The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser

Admittedly I have only read small excerpts, but Spenser's genius blew me away!  I intend to return to this and read the entire book, someday...

4.

Utopia by Sir Thomas More

More's quixotic and highly influential description of Utopia, a civilization more egalitarian than those of early modern Europe.

5.

Astrophil and Stella by Sir Philip Sidney

I recently reviewed this collection of romantic sonnets and really enjoyed them!

6.

Essays by Montaigne

My copy of Michel de Montaigne's essays is more than a thousand pages; I'm not sure if I will ever finish every essay!  I have read quite a few in English and struggled through a few in Middle French.  I love his essays on libraries and reading, and his opinions seem incredibly "modern" for the time that he wrote.

7.

Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare

I have a hard time picking a favorite Shakespeare play, but Much Ado is my favorite comedy.  It has been the source material for endless romantic comedies since.  I particularly like the character of Beatrice.

8.

Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe

Another great Marlowe play, about an overambitious scholar who seeks to conquer death and encounters devils.  I have also read Queen Dido, but did not care for it as much.

9.

Titus Andronicus by William Shakespeare

In my junior year of college, I chose Titus as the text for my final paper for a class on Shakespeare and Ecofeminism.  (Yep, there is a class about that and it was awesome!)  I have a fascination with Titus, and think it is an excellent and intriguing play once you get past the knee-jerk reaction of "gross, people unknowingly eating their own children!"  For a long time scholars were so mortified by the gore of Titus that they tried to argue that Shakespeare did not even write the play.  However, it is one of my favorites and rich in deeper meaning and symbolism!  I definitely recommend everyone give it a shot.

10.

Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum and other poems by Aemilia Lanyer

While she is probably best-known as a possible candidate for Shakespeare's Dark Lady in his sonnets, Lanyer was an excellent poet in her own right.  In a time when misogyny was rampant in literature and women almost entirely unrepresented, Lanyer made a strong case for women as poets and for women as, you know, human beings.  She was a feminist long before the word was ever used, and I particularly like her poem "The Description of Cookham."

Making this list was fun, but aggravating because I kept thinking of a favorite writer only to realize that they wrote in the seventeenth century!  Anyway, thanks so much for stopping by.  Feel free to leave me the link to your Top Ten Tuesday post when you comment and I will check out your list as well!