Twelve Tips for Reading Shakespeare, Part 2
Tips for Reading Shakespear, Part 2
In the previous post, we discussed six tips for making sense of the amazing but difficult poetry of the great William Shakespeare. Let’s get to the remaining six tips.
Tip 7: Be okay with not understanding parts. This is hard for me because I’m a proud person. I don’t like to pass something by without really feeling like I get it. But that’s hard with Shakespeare. In fact, there are whole passages in many of his plays that baffle scholars to this day. Some parts are just obscure or open to lots of interpretation. Many passages allude to cultural or historical events, people, or expressions that won’t make any sense to modern readers. Don’t worry about that. Just move along. Focus on getting the gist.
Tip 8: Remember that Shakespeare wrote mostly in poetry. And poetry, of course, isn’t simple and straightforward. It requires interpretation and thoughtful reading.
Because it’s meant to be poetic, there will be frequent flourishes. People speak in eloquent speeches colored with sometimes extravagant detail, references to mythology or the Bible, and lengthy metaphors and allusions.
This slows down the story and can be confusing until you get used to it. Once you do, however, you’ll see that it’s in some ways the best part of Shakespeare. His characters don’t just converse like regular people in plain language. They speak in verse—in lines that are meant to be beautiful, creative, clever, and evocative.
Tip 9: Read by punctuation, not by line break. One mistake Shakespeare novices make when reading is to pause at the end of each line. That may feel right, but, in fact, punctuation works the same in poetry as it does in prose. Unless you see a comma, don’t pause, and unless you see a period, don’t come to a full stop. Paying attention to punctuation rather than line breaks will help you understand better. Notice how much easier it is to understand the following lines by ignoring the line breaks.
Polonius: It shall do well. But yet do I believe
The origin and commencement of his grief
Sprung from neglected love.
Tip 10: Pay attention to stage directions. It can be easy to get confused if you lose track of who is speaking to whom. The script gives us the speaker, so that’s easy, but you must notice who else is in the scene. At the start of every scene, the playwright tells us who is present using the stage direction enter. During scenes, some characters may exit, while other characters enter. Take note. At the end of scenes, sometimes the stage direction says exeunt. That’s just the plural for exit. If two or more actors leave the stage at the same time, they will be named: [Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern]. If it just says Exeunt, it means all the characters leave the stage.
Another stage direction to take note of is aside. When you see that, it means the speaker is speaking to himself so that no one else can hear. No one but the audience that is. In the play Hamlet, the title character’s first line is an aside:
Hamlet. [Aside] A little more than kin, and less than kind.
Sometimes only one character appears in a scene. When that character speaks, it’s called a soliloquy. The character here speaks their thoughts aloud so that the audience can hear them. Some of the most famous parts of Shakespeare come in these soliloquies, like Hamlet’s famous line, “To be, or not to be: that is the question.”
Tip 11: Learn key Elizabethan words and conventions. Over time, you will get familiar with all kinds of words that are common in Shakespeare but no longer used today. It will help to learn the few examples below.
‘a (he)
An (if)
Anon (soon)
Alas (unfortunately)
Brave (handsome, excellent)
Coz/cousin (family member generally)
Cozen (to cheat)
‘ere (before)
Give me leave (allow me)
Hie (to hurry)
Hither (towards here)
Mark (pay attention or notice)
Or (before)
Sans (without)
Soft (shh, listen)
Sirrah (mister—less formal than sir)
Thee & Thy (you)
Thy & Thine (your and yours)
Thither (towards there)
Want (lack)
Whence (from where)
Wherefore (why)
Whither (where)
Poetic contractions. Sometimes, Shakespeare replaces letters with apostrophes to eliminate syllables for purposes of meter: ‘tis (it is) e’er (ever) if’t (if it) ‘twere (it were)
Archaic suffixes. Some words end in -st, or -th. These suffixes usually indicate present tense: hath (has) cometh (comes) weep’st (weeps) rememberest (remembers)
When you don’t know a word (there will be many of these), you have several options. You can just ignore it and move on. You can figure it out using context clues. Often, your text will provide footnotes with definitions to help you. Or you can take a minute to google it.
12. Hang in there—You’ll get used to it. This is most important. Don’t get discouraged. Learning to read Shakespeare is often just a matter of practice. Just like learning another language is easier the more you hear it, learning the language of Shakespeare gets easier over time.