[MeImCounting]

I studied shakespeare in highschool. Like actually studied and performed the source text. Everyone there "understood" it. Not "understanding it" is merely a symptom of not putting in the effort. Since Shakespeare literally created much of what we call modern English it is actually very easy for a modern teenager to understand shakespeare. You might be thinking of Chaucer, which is actually much more difficult to understand. Shakespeare just requires the bare modicum of effort and its really not that hard.

[dragontamer]

> Hamlet: Get thee to a nunnery! Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me. I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves – believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery. Where’s your father?

[Snip]

> Hamlet. If thou dost marry, I'll give thee this plague for thy dowry: be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a nunnery. Go, farewell. Or if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool; for wise men know well enough what monsters you make of them. To a nunnery, go; and quickly too. Farewell.

I mean, what do people want with regards to a modern translation? Like, I could say "Hamlet then insults Ophelia by saying she should die as a virgin with a double-entendre also suggesting she's a whore" (Due to a quirk in the language of the 1500s, nunnery is a slang term for whorehouse), but its just not as awesome as the insult Hamlet actually slings in the play.

Its over the top, but you know, that's how theater is supposed to be sometimes. (And doubly so: Hamlet himself is being over-the-top on purpose "in universe").

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In my high school, there were "translation notes" so to speak... to help with the slang of the 1500s, to help you out when terms had a 2nd meaning that'd be lost on today. But the base layer is in fact, quite straightforward.

Its really not hard to understand the words as written, though I can definitely see needing deeper analysis + more reading to fully comprehend the scenes and all layers of the play.

But yeah, its like, almost all sex jokes, double-entendres, incredible insults. Etc. etc. Its probably the most low-brow, base humor just with an air of "Smart people think this is cultural" about it. Its stuff high schoolers should honestly find interesting, if its taught correctly.