Feeling anxious and intimidated about having to study Shakespeare?
His plays are virtually mandatory on many a school curriculum and study list, and because of the complexity of ideas and language, or the cultural and historical context, students often struggle with reading, understanding and writing about his works.
But it needn’t be as fearsome as you think: the plays and poetry of Shakespeare have endured over time because they’re still worth reading, and it just takes a few key approaches to unlock your way into his works.
See and hear it
Shakespeare did not write to be read. His plays are always difficult to deal with solely on the page, so get along to the theater or hire DVDs or audio plays or poetry readings to see or hear his words being brought to life. Virtually every version you come across, however, will have abridged the original text (Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet is an interesting exception), and certainly each one will offer a different interpretation of the material – so don’t think watching the movie will substitute for reading the text!
Use the visual and aural experience of the work as a starting point to then get you reading.
Appreciate the pop culture connections
The works of Shakespeare were deliberately created to be thrilling, engaging and hugely popular: they were the Avatar or Gone With the Wind of their day! That’s why they’re full of violence and sex and romance and ghosts and witches and battle scenes and plot twists and slapstick comedy and special effects: don’t feel his plays and poetry won’t be able to appeal to you.
His plots, characters, language, themes and ideas still constantly influence all our favorite movies and books of today: did you realize The Lion King, 10 Things I Hate About You and Twilight are all based on Shakespearean plays?
Read aloud
Every time you get stuck when perusing a play or poem, read the lines aloud. You’re then engaging three ways of understanding information instead of just one: you’re seeing, hearing, and articulating, and this always improves your ability to analyse and retain material.
Plus, as noted above, Shakespeare was meant to be heard, and giving a passage the natural inflections and nuances we create when we read for meaning can make the incomprehensible suddenly make sense.
Don’t sweat the little things
There are plenty of lines in Shakespeare we don’t still fully understand: Hamlet’s "hawk and handsaw" joke, for example. Always read for a general understanding first: if you’re keeping up with the different characters and the basic plot on the first go, that’s fantastic.
One of the joys of studying Shakespeare is that you keep finding new things in his works every time you revisit them, so don’t get stuck your first time on an odd word or phrase you don’t understand – glide over it, and read on for overall meaning rather than constant specifics.
Timelines, character maps and notes in margins
Some useful devices to help with overall meaning include drawing up a timeline for the complexities of the plot, a character map or family tree to trace the relationships between key characters, and making notes in the margins as you go of anything you find interesting or don’t quite understand yet.
Look for other methods on how to control the book you’re studying, and make it work for you by helping you understand it!
Learn the lingo
Shakespeare wrote in English. Don’t be thrown off by any "thees" or "thous" – because he was writing for a wide audience, his plays are full of street slang, catchphrases, in-jokes, and words and language use that was popular at the time.
Any good annotated version of his works will have footnotes or a glossary to explain difficult words, but again, don’t get stuck on them: they’ll be few and far between when compared to all the words he invented that you do know and use every day.
Unpack imagery
Elizabethan theatres could be quite sophisticated in their use of sound, special effects and dramatic action, but lighting and scene changes were a serious problem. Shakespeare’s plays therefore often devote lots of time to describing setting, seasons, moods and emotions in as much detail as possible, using as imaginative and evocative language and metaphor as he could.
The trick is that he loves re-using metaphors and images within a play (and within a poem too), and that these become thematic as well. So once you’ve opened up a few of his descriptions and similes (how love is like a summer’s day, or that there are daggers in men’s smiles), you’ll keep finding new keys to understanding other important descriptive passages.
Accept the complexities
People are still devoting their lives to studying Shakespeare. No one can possible expect you to fully understand one of his works overnight, at first reading, or even after performing one of his roles. So give yourself a break: there is an immense wealth of meaning and inspiration to draw from his poems and plays, but you don’t have to come to grips with everything.
Focus on the themes, ideas, characters, or images that interest and intrigue you the most.
Welcome help
As long as people are devoting their lives to studying Shakespeare, we might as well make the most of what they’ve discovered! Study guides can be useful, but beware of non-scholarly ones where the author is unnamed or doesn’t display any academic credentials.
Also look out for dodgy online articles or supposed sample essays that will be more hindrance than help. But do seek out any scholarly material by reputable writers that examines the elements you’re particularly interested in yourself, and use them to fuel your own understanding of, and ideas about, the text.
Value your own opinion
Here's the thing. The works of Shakespeare really don’t mean anything unless they mean something to you personally. Shakespeare wrote for his audience, and all the critics in the world therefore cannot undermine or outrank your own opinions about the texts as an informed reader. Don’t give away your thoughts and feelings about the play or poem to other scholars, or let the premise of your essay be swallowed up by the quotes and references of others.
All forms of study are about you entering into a dialogue with the rest of the scholarly world, and your opinion is just as valuable as anyone else’s and will continue to grow and develop the more you read, learn and respond to Shakespeare’s works.
It’s likely Shakespeare would be slightly flattered but also quite appalled to discover how reverential and intimidated we are about his writings today! They were created to be enthralling, fascinating, and entertaining first and foremost, so really enjoy exploring them and finding out why they’re still so famous and so well-loved for yourself.