Why is Shakespeare Hard?

One reason Shakespeare is often considered "difficult," "boring," or "incomprehensible" is because we make him that way. Shakespeare is intimidating for most modern readers: he doesn't sound the way we do; he's too poetic for our modern tastes; he requires some time and thought to appreciate. These, of course, are all reasons that English teachers like him, but most students tend to disagree. The vast majority of students today don't want to THINK. They consider it painful, not unlike having oral surgery. If something can be watched in thirty minutes on TV, why read it? If I can download the answer from the Internet in thirty seconds, why spend an hour figuring it out for myself? If someone else has already written a book about it, why should I write a paragraph of my own? But I don't put all the blame on students. Far too many teachers over the years have tortured kids by making them read Shakespeare as though the plays were nothing more than academic drudgery, as though he was trying to be inaccessible to mere commoners, and the way to succeed was to somehow crack his literary code. Granted, it is often difficult for a teacher faced with a class of disaffected, uninterested students to make Shakespeare come alive -- but the least we can do is remind students that this stuff was meant to be entertainment and it's okay to be entertained by it.

Another part of the reason Shakespeare fails to inspire enthusiasm in modern readers is that we get bogged down in the details of the words, rather like we are translating text from one language to another. You have to read and listen to Shakespeare an entire sentence or passage at a time, not just from line to line or word to word. Listen for the overall idea; don't get bogged down in the little details--those are for the scholars who will analyze the play later. First and foremost, you have to know what is going on. Because this is all expressed through language (not action, like in most modern movies), it is important to know what the words mean. But you can't do that by trying to "translate" each word. I recently asked my classes to summarize The Prologue in their own words. Many of them came out looking like this:

Two families, both alike in dignity, in beautiful Verona where the play takes place, from an old feud start fighting and the citizens make their hands bloody. From the deadly reproductive organs of the two enemies, two ill-fated lovers kill themselves, whose pathetic actions do with their death bury their parents' conflict. The fearful passage of their doomed love and the continuance of their parents' rage, which, except for their children's deaths, nothing could remove, is now the two-hours of play we'll perform. If you with patient ears listen, what you miss our work will try to fix.

Huh? Does this sound like a modern "translation"? Would anyone in his right mind actually say it this way? I think most of us would probably introduce the play like this:

In Verona, two rich and respected families are fighting due to a long-standing feud, and citizens are hurting each other in the streets. The ill-fated children of these two enemies fall in love and kill themselves, which ends the feud. This play is about how they fall in love and what they do to try and be together. Listen up!

Remember: Shakespeare probably never thought his plays would be studied one word at a time. And while there is a great deal to be found in them through careful study, it's best to take a wholistic approach until you're comfortable with the language. The best way to do that is not by reading the plays, but by seeing them performed.

The fact that most Shakespeare today is read, not performed, is the other problem for modern audiences. Given a choice between a movie based on a play by Shakespeare and the latest action thriller starring whoever is currently the most popular star, most folks nowadays go with the sure blockbuster. This creates the impression that Shakespeare's place is in the classroom. Shakespeare's plays can be action-packed, romantic, and full of good-looking stars; there are countless recent "updates" that have all of the above, but most of the time the language is updated as well as the setting, so a lot of viewers don't even know it's Shakespeare (which actually goes to show how "timeless" he is). Baz Luhrmann remade Romeo and Juliet in 1997, and, while much of the dialogue was simply removed, the words that remained were left as Shakespeare wrote them. I thought is was a suprisingly good movie, and I think it helps modern students understand the play. But for the most part, we talk in terms of "reading Shakespeare," and because of that he will often seem difficult, which brings us back to where I started: Because most modern viewers and readers don't invest the THOUGHT to make Shakespeare meaningful, they are ultimately just confused by him.

But that doesn't mean I won't keep trying to keep him alive and make him meaningful to my classes.