[patio11]

There are a lot of people whose single recollection of Romeo and Juliet is the garden scene, and who understand that scene to have Juliet aware that Romeo is present in the garden because of "Wherefore art thou Romeo?", due to simple confusion in not knowing that "Wherefore" means "Why?" and that Juliet goes into an extended meditation on why Romeo was born as Romeo, in the rival family, and therefore off-limits to her despite the urges of her heart.

And that sort of thing repeats on a line-by-line basis through most of Shakespeare. I tend to think one gets better at reading it relatively quickly, even as a high school student, but there is a reason why the best way to read it is with one page of the historical text and one with extensive notes.

This skips a long discussion on "Should we teach Shakespeare?", "To what degree should we allocate resources to decoding Shakespeare given competing demands for resources to establish baseline proficiency in modern written English?", and "Is a production of Shakespeare in historically representative English a service to the broader community or is it a service to the class which already knows the story and therefore does not need the actors words, which they mostly will not understand, to impart it?"

[at_a_remove]

The "Wherefore" bit is actually an OKCupid question due to how commonly misunderstood it is.

When I tutored Shakespeare to kids, I always prepped the vocab for each scene, got extra copies ready, and made the parents act out bits. All out-loud. It really helps.

[tptacek]

McWhorter's argument, distilled, is that we should not teach Shakespeare. :)

[pvg]

Is it? I've read some of the articles he's written about this and it seems to be mostly 'watching performances of Shakespeare's plays does not magically make you understand Early Modern English'.

[tptacek]

I'm probably blurring stuff he's said on Lexicon Valley with stuff he's written.

[pvg]

I guess I'll have to listen to those now to hunt down your weaselry!