WELLESLEY, Mass., Feb. 16: " They had the stamina, the passion and the 'Will' to succeed. Wellesley College will go down in history as having read the entire works of William Shakespeare - unabridged - in less than 24 hours.
'We read all 39 plays and all 154 sonnets and all five narrative poems, and we did so in 22 hours and 5 minutes, finishing at 3:21 p.m., having started at sundown the day before, which was 5:16,' said organizer Maggie O'Grady of Yonkers, N.Y., a Wellesley senior and member of the college's Shakespeare Society. At the conclusion of the marathon, O'Grady, who had not slept since the contest began, proclaimed, 'I am thus quite delirious.' But for the Bard-loving Shakespeare Society, it was all worth it.
'We're excited and very tired,' she said. The event ended with the reading of 'Hamlet,' an intense conclusion to the 24 hours of non-stop Shakespeare. 'It was really magnificent and very, very dramatic,' O'Grady said. "