I'll stay in character here (because I believe it) and say, "Pick one work of Shakespeare, and make it your own." Don't just read it, but go out of your way to understand it. Get extra help if you need it. Get to the point where you understand what people are saying to each other, you get the jokes, you can explain the plot to other people not because you memorized it from the Cliff Notes but because it just plain makes sense to you. Midsummer Night's Dream is a great one - on the one hand a light comedy, but the deeper you get you'll come to realize why some academics consider it a better work than Hamlet.

I'm completely serious. I'm not plugging my man Shakespeare because I've got t-shirts to sell. It's been said that the sum of all human emotion has been portrayed within the works of Shakespeare. Knew a lady once who, when asked her opinion of Shakespeare, told me: "If all human civilization should be wiped out tomorrow, and one book left behind so that whatever comes next could see what came before? That book should be King Lear."

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