How to Read a Shakespeare Play
Admit it. You’re a little bit scared of Shakespeare. It’s a completely understandable response because his play, after all, are the Mount Everest of English-language literature: beautiful, mysterious…and far too big to handle without some preparation. The following steps may not cure your Bard-ophobia completely, but they will provide a solid foundation for you to appreciate and enjoy the play of Will of Stratford.
1)Go slow. Reading Shakespeare is not the same as reading Harry Potter. Acknowledge that the language is poetic and challenging. If you try to race through it, the complexity of the words and phrasing will frustrate you, and all of its beauty will be lost.
2)Get annotated. Like most of us, you probably have no idea what Hamlet means by a “bare bodkin.” There is a very good reason for that: Shakespeare’s plays are approximately 400 years old. One way to bridge the gap between Elizabethan speak and your own is to get a well-annotated edition of the play you are studying. (We recommend No Fear Shakespeare.) This way, you can be in on Shakespeare’s jokes and understand historical references. (And, by the way, a “bare bodkin” is a dagger.)
3)Don’t skip the soliloquies. When you see a big block of text coming from one character, it might be tempting to skim or skip it altogether. After all, these speeches are just poetic wheel-spinning, right? Wrong. The soliloquies in Shakespeare’s works are not interruptions to the action of the play: they are the action. Remove the soliloquies from Hamlet and the title character’s entire journey from grief to indecision to potential madness to death is utterly lost. In addition, we will be using soliloquies to further our work with reading comprehension and analysis.
4)Ask questions. One of the reasons Shakespeare’s play are so brilliant is that they are full of ambiguities. For many of the questions posed in his plays, there are no “right” answers, but that does not mean you should not wrestle with them. There is a reason why his plays have withstood the test of time.
5)Look for the contrasts. Nothing is as it seems in Shakespeare, and some of the most interesting aspects of his play come from seeming inconsistences. Where is the humor in his tragedies.
6)See it after you read it. While there is much to be gained from reading a play, it is ultimately an incomplete experience. Shakespeare’s poetry is even more striking and radiant when delivered by able actors during a well-made production. We will be viewing a filmed version of the play, so that you will be able to see the performance. However, that won’t happen until we have finished reading the play. Yes, you have to read it!