How to Actually Enjoy Shakespeare: A Beginner’s Guide to Reading and Watching Shakespearean Plays (pt 1)

Yes, you can. And yes, it's so worth it.

You wouldn't believe the number people I've met who, after discovering what I do, have told me that, "Shakespeare is too hard to understand." Often, these folks feel lost, bored, or overwhelmed by Shakespeare. For many, Shakespeare brings back memories of confusing high school English classes or dense, hard-to-understand texts. But here's the truth: Shakespeare doesn’t have to be hard or boring.

At Chanticleer Shakespeare Co, we believe that Shakespeare is for everyone, and in this two-part guide, we’ll explain how to actually enjoy Shakespeare. You may be reading his plays for the first time, or gearing up to attend your first live Shakespearean performance. Simply employ the right mindset, and a few simple strategies, and you could very well fall in love with the Bard of Avon.

How to Read Shakespeare (and Actually Enjoy It)

In this blog post, we'll be exploring how to read Shakespeare's text. Not as a studious exercise, nor as preparation for an acting job, but as a lover of plain good storytelling. Reading (and understanding) Shakespeare doesn’t have to feel like homework, and with these tips, you'll be diving into these plays with new excitement, turning what was once confusion into a craving for the classics.

Tip 1. Shakespeare wrote plays, not novels.

He did write a number of beautiful sonnets, but we can touch on those later. For now, we're looking at the work he's most known for, and that would be his theatrical work. As such, Shakespeare's plays are meant to be spoken aloud and performed, not read silently in a quiet room. However, with the use of your imagination, you can virtually see the play come to life in your head.

One of the easiest ways to visualize the play is to put yourself in the shoes of the characters. Read the lines out loud, feel the emotional journey of the language, experience the beauty of the poetry. There's something tactile and delicious about speaking these words audibly. These lines have rung out in theatres across the globe for hundreds of years, and to have that kind of history carried on your own voice is a powerful thing.

Tip 2. You aren't being graded.

This isn't homework. There's no test at the end. You aren't going to fail your high school English class (take that, Mrs. Cochrane). You don't need to fully understand every word. Even the most experienced Shakespearean scholars occasionally get tripped up by Shakespeare's double entendres, antiquated phrasing, or what have you. Don't beat yourself up if you don't immediately understand it all.

Instead, try to focus on the emotional tone of the lines. Step back a bit and look at the bigger picture of the play. Where are we? What's going on? What does this character want? If you can answer these questions at any point in the play, guess what! You're understanding the piece. You can no longer say, "I just don't get it." Because you do get it. And you're on your way to peeling back the layers and getting into the juicy bits.

Tip 3. It's okay to get a little help.

Using modern resources to help clarify the text is not a sign of failure. In fact, it's quite the opposite. There are plenty of tools, both on and offline, which are constantly used by professional scholars, actors, and Shakespeare enthusiasts the world over, and using them to help clarify and vivify the text will help you to more thoroughly enjoy these plays.

Lexicons, footnotes, essays, etc. can all be helpful, but if you're looking for a simple, straightforward way to understand particular moments or lines in a play, No Fear Shakespeare is an excellent resource for beginners. There, you'll find the text paraphrased into modern English, which will help to clarify the meaning of the lines. But the magic happens when, once you understand the line, you go back and read the original line aloud. The poetry will take on the meaning Shakespeare intended for you, and you'll gain so much more enjoyment from the language. It's like unlocking a secret from the past, and it never gets old.

Tip 4. Get into the rhythm.

So much of Shakespeare's poetry is written in Iambic Pentameter (see our previous posts about this poetic meter here). Getting a grasp of how that rhythm feels can help clarify the meaning of lines, as well as the emotional journey of the characters. It's obviously a must for Shakespearean actors, but for casual readers, it can help take the work out of understanding these plays.

Iambic Pentameter is not a scary concept, as the meter mimics the human heartbeat. It's a human rhythm we're all familiar with, and its a type of portal into understanding these characters. Which brings me to our 5th tip for understanding Shakespeare.

Tip 5. Connect with the characters.

Shakespeare's plays are centered around relatable human beings. Jealous lovers, rebellious teenagers, ruthless rulers, and witty underdogs. Shakespeare wrote the humanity in his characters, and found ways for us to see ourselves in them. Don't get bogged down by the "old-fashioned" Elizabethan language. Focus on the characters, and the humanity at their core.

We've all experienced betrayal, jealousy, ambition, love, and heartbreak. When you see a character in one of Shakespeare's plays experiencing one of these universal emotions, try to relate to their circumstance. When you do, the language will come to life in a way you might not have expected. It hits home, even if it was written 400 years ago.

These strategies are just the tip of the iceberg. I'm sure once you go down the rabbit hole, you'll discover all sorts of helpful resources to guide other beginners to actually enjoy Shakespeare. Next post, we'll talk about watching Shakespeare. After all, that's how the Bard intended us to experience his work.