Finale - "To be or not to be..."

This is the 200th and final blog in 'My Year With The Bard' - 2013. It is certainly the last for the year 2013 but it may be the last entry on this blog. So let's start. Your stats are in and your top 10 Shakespeare works or hits in order are:
1. Shakespeare's Sonnets
2. Romeo and Juliet
3. Hamlet
4. Taming of the Shrew
5. Henry VIII
6. King Lear
7. Macbeth
8. A Midsummer's Night's Dream
9. Henry V
10. Julius Caesar

In Shakespeare's time, audience numbers and anecdotal evidence in diaries of the period would seem to indicate that a top ten in Shakespeare's time could probably have been:
1. Romeo and Juliet
2. Henry V
3. The Merry Wives of Windsor
4. Julius Caesar
5. Twelfth Night
6. Richard III
7. Henry IV Part 1
8. A Midsummer's Night's Dream
9. Macbeth
10. Anthony and Cleopatra

I have been asked a couple of times what were the best or most enjoyable works I read and what were the worst. I have conceded and will post these in order in the context that as a theatre director and teacher, I am always looking at how each piece could be staged, delivered, seen and presented. It includes the plays and the poetry. I sometimes was impressed most by the plot, the characters, the sense of mise en scene and I am partial to a fine set of verse. Some plays like 'Hamlet' have it all. Here goes:
1. Hamlet
2. Macbeth
3. Romeo and Juliet
4. Othello
5. The Tempest
6. The Sonnets (poetry)
7. A Midsummer Night's Dream
8. King Lear
9. Richard III
10. Henry VIII
11. Taming of the Shrew
12. Twelfth Night
13. As You Like It
14. A Winter's Tale
15. Much Ado About Nothing
16. Julius Caesar
17. Anthony and Cleopatra
18. The Merchant of Venice
19. Henry IV Part 1
20. Measure for Measure
21. Love's Labour Lost
22. Venus and Adonis (poetry)
23. Troilus and Cressida
24. Timing of Athens
25. Coriolanus
26. Titus Andronicus
27. Richard II
28. Henry VIII
29. Pericles
30. Henry IV Part 2
31. Henry IV Part 3
32. Henry VI Part 3
33. Henry VI Part 1
34. Henry VI Part 2
35. King John
36. A Lover's Complaint (poetry)
37. A Comedy of Errors
38. Cymbeline
39. Two Gentlemen of Verona
40. Al's Well That Ends Well
41. The Merry Wives of Windsor
42. The Rape of Lucrece