How to Get the Most out of Reading Shakespeare

“Shakespeare and His Contemporaries” by John Faed. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Every word that Shakespeare wrote* is available for free: MIT maintains a great website with all of Shakespeare’s works available for free at http://shakespeare.mit.edu/. Free audio of every Shakespeare play is available at http://librivox.org. Don’t forget that your local library will almost certainly have an anthology or copies of individual plays. Books usually include helpful editorial content such as lists of characters and annotations.

You can do it: You have probably inherited some unhelpful cultural baggage about Shakespeare. You might have heard that understanding Shakespeare is difficult, and that only really smart people can do it. Nonsense. You might feel some pressure to like Shakespeare’s writing, or at least to acknowledge its greatness. As with any other thing that you like or dislike, it’s a matter of personal taste. Give yourself permission to dislike it.

Words might not mean what you think they do: Shakespeare’s plays are recognizable as English, but his use of language was idiosyncratic even for his time, and the language has changed a lot in 400 years. The meaning of certain words may have shifted considerably during that time. If something looks strange, look it up. Textbooks will sometimes include helpful explanations in footnotes, but you will probably need to use a dictionary. If a dictionary doesn’t help, get a…