by Ian Hardy

Created on: March 06, 2009   Last Updated: March 07, 2009

Were Shakespeare incomprehensible, he'd have been forgotten four hundred years ago. Perhaps, to a modern reader (especially young high-school students), he may seem unintelligible, but we must remember he was writing to a different culture in a different time in what was, in many ways, a different language. There are three major reasons why Shakespeare gets a bad rap from a minority of people: the first is that they have no exposure to the real stage. The second is that they do not understand the culture of the time. The third is that they do not understand Elizabethan English. All of these points are easily dismissed: to an individual cultured in at least one or two of those areas, Shakespeare is accessible.

Shakespeare wrote plays. Reading a play versus acting in or watching a play are far different experiences. To truly grasp Shakespeare, one must act in or watch a play or two of his to see. In a play, it is not so much what the actor says, as how he says it. A script does not capture this; instead a director drives the "how" and the actor delivers it. Many students are bereft of such experiences, and are instead assigned to read "Julius Caesar" or "Romeo and Juliette" as if they were standard prose. To those who don't have the opportunity to see the work live, their ignorance is forgivable.

The culture of Britain of the 17th century was far different. Shakespeare wrote to a pre-industrial audience shortly after the religious Reformation and during late secular Renaissance. Key cultural differences include: a strong Catholic tradition (despite the recent creation of the Anglican church), an audience at least somewhat versed in the Ancient Classics (Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, etc.) Many people were still superstitious, so there was an air of magic in Shakespeare's discussion of Fates and other mythical creatures. In "The Merchant of Venice," we see anti-Semitism as a cultural norm. A modern, casual reader of Shakespeare typically lacks experience in any of these areas. Many average students may not know Plato from Pluto, lack much sense of the magnitude or significance of the Reformation, and have only a cursory understanding of the Renaissance. And Heaven help them if they read of Shylock in "Merchant." Shakespeare spoke to a time of intense social turmoil. We are undergoing a similar time, but for far different reasons, and the reasons behind turmoil are as important as the turmoil itself.

Of course, the language is different. A student who is more than nominally

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