[whateveridunno]

I thought it was illegal not to have read Hamlet by 21?

Seriously though, give it another try. Shakespeare's wide-ranging enough that there's likely to be something to your taste. And with his comedies, especially, I'd recommend watching Shakespeare and not reading him- that's how his plays were meant to be experienced. Although it's nice to read an annotated version and discover all the (often dirty) jokes you didn't get.

Added benefit to reading Shakespeare: you'll understand about 40% more literary allusions (read the Bible, Ovid, Homer, and Virgil to get the rest).

[henrikschroder]

One thing that never ceases to amaze me is that there are so many succesful modern retellings of his plays. Something about the stories are just timeless.

Watch the originals, by all means, but the reimagined ones are not too shabby either:

Romeo + Juliet, modern day "Verona Beach"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VBsi0VxiLg

Much Ado About Nothing, set in modern days:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnmZc8uoEbo

Hamlet, set in the 1800's

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rd74Gniz-A

Richard III, set in WW2:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXc0-EME0C8

[ZeroGravitas]

His stories were timeless, even when he first wrote them, as they often drew on existing stories:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare%27s_plays#Source_m...

[mewse]

As someone new to Shakespeare, you should definitely start out by watching performances, rather than reading scripts. Until you've absorbed the rhythm and the literary style, it can be very difficult to follow their plots just from a cold reading of the text; particularly for the histories. (And while King Lear is classed as a tragedy, I've personally always felt that it reads more like one of the histories)

If you do start reading the scripts for pleasure (which totally is not required!), then it's probably a good idea to start with one which you've seen performed, just to let your brain adapt itself to seeing the words in written form, and to get used to looking back and forth between the text and the annotations, without needing to worry about losing the plot.

[omegaham]

This. Plays were the movies of their time; they were meant to be watched. The scripts are great, too, but they're supposed to accompany the play, not the other way around.

It's like reading the lyrics to a song. Sure, some lyrics are absolutely fantastic in their own right, but they were meant to be sung to music, not just read by themselves.

Hell, even with music, some bands go from being mediocre to flat-out amazing when they perform live.

[jrapdx3]

Over the years I've seen (heard) a lot of Shakespeare plays, and I mostly agree with you. Yes, just reading the play is inadequate because the written form is so bare. Attending a live performance is a much better experience. The dialog is meant to be spoken and to be heard.

What I do recommend, and is my own practice, is reading the play before going to the performance. We are especially blessed to read Shakespeare today, the internet is so very helpful. So many versions of every Shakespeare play, most have annotations about Elizabethan language that help the reader make sense of it.

Reading AOT makes it much easier to follow what's happening on stage. Even small local productions can be done well, Shakespearean plays were always meant as entertainment, go and enjoy!

I think you are right about the classification of the plays, Comedy, Tragedy, etc, don't necessarily fit our modern sensibilities. In Shakespeare's time, "Merchant of Venice" was called a "comedy", but in our era we'd say it's more tragic than not. I'd agree familiarity with the play is more important than its categorization.

[mewse]

It's been a long time since I was in that position; almost none of the plays are new to me at this stage. (I'll confess, though, that I've neither seen nor read Coriolanus, Cymbaline, or Timon of Athens. Or, for that matter, any of the Apocrypha) For me personally, I would absolutely do exactly the same as you; if I was going to attend a production of any of those plays which I've not yet experienced, I would read the script, first.

But for someone who isn't yet accustomed to the language, I expect that it would be a hard slog, getting through the texts without an actor's interpretation to help you along.

[jrapdx3]

> But for someone who isn't yet accustomed to the language, I expect that it would be a hard slog, getting through the texts without an actor's interpretation to help you along.

That's the beauty of the web. The online transcripts of the plays provide many explanations of the language and its cultural context, which makes the dialog so much more understandable to people coming to it the first time.

Without doing this it will be difficult for a beginner to understand what the actors are saying or what's happening on stage. Frankly, I can have trouble with plays I've seen only once before or haven't seen in a long time, I figure it won't hurt to read it before seeing it again.

[hudibras]

>What I do recommend, and is my own practice, is reading the play before going to the performance.

But what about the spoilers?

[a_humean]

You don't watch/read Shakespeare for M Night Shyamalan twists, but instead for the quality of the language, the actor's performances, and the director's liberties with the script.

[justifier]

> Until you've absorbed the rhythm and the literary style

also reading outloud helps

i used to tell people the first one will take you two months, the second one will take you two weeks, and the third one will take you two days

i meant it as playful encouragement but i think it may have put some people off

also, i just like taking more time with texts than it takes me to read them

it took me two weeks to read the first sentence of basho's oku no hosomichi:

"moon and sun are passing figures of countless generations and years coming or going wanderers too"

[anexprogrammer]

I'd highly recommend performances using original pronunciation if you can track some down. It makes a remarkable difference compared to the RP commonly used for Shakespeare. Half the rhymes just don't work in modern English, and especially not in RP English.

It took me a little while to tune in to what sounds to modern ears like a heavy West Country (pirate!) accent. That said I found it far easier to enjoy than RP.

For a little background on OP, see a 10 min Open University explainer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s or this 6 min comparison of a speech https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hi-rejaoP7U

[shiro]

Grown up in Japan and got into theatre, I've tried a few of Shakespeare (in Japanese translations), but I didn't fully get it---until I came to US and actually read it aloud in English. I agree that it is much more approachable as spoken words.