How to Understand and Read Shakespeare

For many students, before they even get to analysing Macbeth, this video is where they need to start. I truly believe that Shakespeare's plays are timeless - it is why they have been adapted so many times over the centuries. However, the language is most definitely not timeless.

The challenge of understanding Elizabethan English becomes such a huge obstacle for some students that it prevents them from ever enjoying or truly being able to analyse the plays. I think that is such a shame and it is a big reason why I made this video. I cannot claim that by the end of it you will suddenly read Shakespeare as easily as modern English; but I will claim that you will have a large number of strategies to help you with understanding the language.

For what it is worth, I also believe that there is great value and no shame in texts like No Fear Shakespeare, which allow you to read modern translations alongside the original Shakespeare. If you'd like to buy something like that, you can use my Amazon affiliate link. It won't impact the amount you pay for the text, but it will earn me a small comission to help me run Stream English.

Timestamps:

0:00 How to read Shakespeare
03:30 Chunk it
07:16 Look at the syntax
09:16 Ellipsis & Contractions
14:06 Don't!
14:53 Archaic Language
17:07 Allusions
20:48 Metaphors & Symbols

This video is on my YouTube channel. However, there are a few benefits to watching it here instead:

1. You can register to keep a track of which videos you’ve watched
2. You can bookmark lessons for later
3. There may or may not be no ads, but I can neither confirm nor deny and I definitely didn't tell you if YouTube asked, OK?

There are also multiple resources to help you in the Study Materials section:

Unlocking Shakespeare Study Guide

This is the perfect accompaniment to my video on how to read Shakespeare's language. It goes back over the strategies with more examples and - most importantly - more opportunities for you to practice putting those strategies to use.

Macbeth Wide Margin Textbook

If you don't have a copy of the play to annotate, then this is a must, must, MUST have. If you do have a copy of the play, but it's one of those editions where they have filled every inch of the page with only slightly useful information and have left practically no space for your notes, then my version is also going to be ideal. The wide margins of this version mean that there is plenty of space for your notes. I have still provided translations for lots of the archaic language, and I've provided a list of characters at the start too. It is basically everything I always wished was in the copies of Macbeth I had to use to teach! If you are from a school and would like to order physical copies of the textbook, you can find it on Amazon too.

Macbeth Hexagons Game

If you are studying Macbeth for the purposes of an exam, then this is a fantastic, quick and easy revision game (dare I call it 'fun'?). The basic idea is that every hexagon has a character, theme or some sort of important technique on it. You have to join the hexagons up by connecting the things that link. It's a great way to practice making links and also revise what you know about every important aspect of this play.

If there are any videos or resources you'd like to help you with the study of this play, then please do leave a comment and let me know. I know that my videos only scratch the surface at the moment and you can rest assured that I fully intend to release videos on all the other characters, themes and key techniques. I'm also planning to release model essays so that you can spot the patterns of approach across top grade essays.

Lesson Transcript:

This video is all about understanding Shakespeare—not analyzing him, just understanding him. Because for a lot of students, they can't even think about trying to analyze because they're just trying to comprehend what on earth he is on about.

The first key thing about being able to understand Shakespeare is being able to read him correctly. A lot of students incorrectly read Shakespeare because of the way the words are presented on the page. Shakespeare is writing verse, not prose. Most of the time, that means he's writing in the style of poetry, not of a novel. The reason this can cause issues for students is because they basically read and pause in their reading at the wrong points. A lot of students will read to the end of a line and treat the end of that line as if it's a full stop, pause there, and then start the next line as if it's a new line. That's not how you're supposed to read Shakespeare.

The punctuation marks give you your clue of what you're supposed to do. If it's a comma, you're supposed to take a short pause. If it's a full stop, a semicolon, a dash, a question mark, or a colon, you're meant to take a longer pause. You should not necessarily be taking a pause just because it's the end of a line. If the end of a line has a punctuation mark on it, then you might take a pause. But if there's no punctuation mark there at all, just keep on reading.

I'm going to read this little chunk—this is taken from Macbeth. I'm going to read this chunk to show you what I mean:

"Alas, poor country!

Almost afraid to know itself. It cannot

Be called our mother, but our grave; where nothing,

But who knows nothing, is once seen to smile;

Where sighs and groans and shrieks that rend the air

Are made, not marked; where violent sorrow seems

A modern ecstasy. The dead man’s knell

Is there scarce asked for who; and good men’s lives

Expire before the flowers in their caps,

Dying or ere they sicken."

So, you might still be thinking, "I have no idea what that said." That's fine, don't worry. This is only the first strategy. But nevertheless, hopefully by reading that correctly, you were at least able to find it a bit easier to follow along.

Now, it's time for you to have a go. So, I want you to try and read this little chunk this time. This is a chunk from The Merchant of Venice. And follow that strategy: don't just pause because there's an end of a line. Pause for a short time if there's a comma, and a longer time if there's a full stop, semicolon, dash, question mark, or colon. So pause me now to have a go, and then when you unpause, I'll read it to you so you can check if you read it correctly:

"The quality of mercy is not strained.

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven

Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:

It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.

'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes

The throned monarch better than his crown..."

So after hearing that, hopefully again you're thinking, even if you're not fully understanding it yet, it's starting to sound more like comprehensible English. And part of the reason why you might still not be understanding it is because you're trying to take in too much information at once. Being able to read and immediately understand that amount of Shakespeare is super challenging, especially if you're not used to reading Shakespeare.

That's why my next tip is to chunk it. Break the big chunks of what somebody's saying down into smaller and more manageable chunks. Understand each little chunk, and then essentially put it all back together. I probably should have used a jigsaw metaphor there, but now if I try and mix my chunking with a jigsaw metaphor, it's going to create some really weird images. So I'm just going to stick with "chunk it" to show you what I mean.

We've got an extract from—oh, who's this from? Who's this from? Who's this from? The Taming of the Shrew. So, let's look at chunking this. First of all, we can chunk by sentence. So, look for where the full stop is or the semicolon is, and you make that your chunk. In the case of the example we've got here, our first chunk would be: "Tranio, I saw her coral lips to move, and with her breath she did perfume the air." However, you might find that's still too much information, that's still too overwhelming. So there is absolutely nothing wrong with doing it by the commas instead. Chunk it by where you see the commas.

So if I was to do that with this one, first of all, my first chunk is: "Tranio." Okay, cool. That helps me comprehend: Lucentio is talking to Tranio, because he says his name at the very start. Understood that word. "I saw her coral lips to move." So with this little chunk, we can see that he's saying he saw her lips move and he saw what her lips looked like. Next chunk: "And with her breath she did perfume the air." Her breath, her talking, is beautiful because it's like perfume in the air. So he's basically complimenting her. He's talking to Tranio about some woman and really complimenting her, and thinking she's beautiful and thinking she's amazing. "Sacred." That's like religious. Okay, cool. Yeah, she's really amazing—maybe something to be worshipped like a goddess. "And sweet." She's really nice. "Was all I saw in her." Okay, so he only sees good things in her. So now we chunk each little bit, we're piecing it together to get overall: Lucentio is saying, "Man, that girl was good-looking. I really liked everything I saw." Done. We got it.

We then have: "Tranio: 'Nay, then...'" Okay. So why do we say "nay, then" in modern English? We're about to make a suggestion, right? "Now then, you shouldn't go to the shop." "Now then, don't buy that lottery scratch card." "Now, maybe don't go on Strictly Come Dancing." You're making a suggestion. "It is time to stir him from his trance." Now, the biggest challenge to comprehending this is: who's the "him"? Who is Tranio talking about? Well, based on the information we've got here, who's in a trance? Lucentio is. He is so obsessed with this girl, and he loves her, and he's thinking she's really beautiful and amazing. So Tranio is like, "Wake up from your trance." Cool.

"I pray, awake, sir!" Oh, I just read three chunks. "I pray." Okay, Tranio really wants something. "Awake." Wake up. "Sir." He's talking to Lucentio. Okay, so the "him" in his trance is definitely Lucentio, and he's saying to Lucentio, "Snap out of it, mate." "If you love the maid..." "Maid" is like a girl. So he's saying to Lucentio, "If you love the girl, bend thoughts and wits to achieve her." Do whatever you've got to do to get her. Easy.

So what you can see is that by chunking Shakespeare into smaller bits, we are then better able to understand those smaller bits. Now, I know you might be thinking, "No, Mrs. Wear, I still didn't get those smaller bits—like, what? 'Bend thoughts and wits to achieve her'? What?" Don't worry, I'm working us down. Okay, so it starts off on a large scale: read it right. Next step down: chunk it.

Next step down: look at the syntax. Because one of the other things that, even when you chunk it, can still make Shakespeare difficult is the way he writes his grammar. That's what I mean by syntax: the order he puts his words in in a sentence. In the 21st century, we typically structure our sentences as subject-verb-object. "I kicked the cat." "She is sleeping." "He sees me." Subject: I, she, he. Verb: kicked, sleeping, sees. Object: the cat, her again, me. That's typically the grammar we follow these days.

Shakespeare, on the other hand, was not following that grammar all the time, because he didn't have to. Jacobean and Tudor English did not have the same cemented rules that we've got today. He could mix things up a lot more. He could structure his sentences as subject-object-verb, object-subject-verb, verb-object-subject, verb-subject-object. You don't need to remember all of that, by the way—don't go writing that list down, that is not essential. My point is, he could arrange his sentences in any which way he wanted to make it work. Because remember, he's trying to write poetry. And so, what Shakespeare got to do was twist the grammar to work for his poetry. If he's trying to make a particular rhyme work, if he's trying to make a particular rhythm work, he played with grammar to make it work.

Just have a look at these examples: "But all this did I know before." Just rearrange that into 21st-century English: "I knew all this before." It's a really simple sentence; he just words it with different grammatical patterns. Another one: "Never was seen so black a day as this." "A day as black as this hasn't been seen before." You get this, right? All he's doing is rearranging the grammar. He's like Yoda: he just says it in a slightly different way, and he's not as cute. "Me they shall feel." "They shall feel me." That felt like a really messed-up thing to say as a teacher.

Ellipsis is something we use all the time still today. Just have a look at this conversation: "Lunch?" "Let's go." If you think about the technical rules of the English language, "Lunch?" is not a complete sentence. What it should say is, "Hello, good sir. Would you like to go to lunch right now?" But we don't do that. That's such a mouthful, that's such a waste of time. You can communicate so much faster and still just as clearly just by saying "Lunch?" Same: you don't need to say, "Let us go to lunch right now, good sir." You can just say, "Let's go." And again, because you're occupying the same space, you're having a conversation, you're able to use your tone of voice—you each know what each other is saying. So, ellipsis is when you leave out words that technically, because of English grammar, should be in a sentence, but you don't need them because you're able to have the conversation without them.

And—ooh, I've gone all foggy! Contractions: you probably already know what those are. Contractions are when you shorten two words; you kind of smoosh them together. So "let's go" is actually "let us." "I'll," "it's" for "it is"—all that good stuff.

Now, Shakespeare used ellipses and contractions all the time. If we think about ellipsis first of all: his plays are essentially a bunch of people having conversations all the time. So just like normal people use ellipsis when they're having conversations, Shakespeare's people use ellipsis when they're having conversations. Just have a look at this quote from Macbeth. Macbeth is talking to Lady Macbeth about the plan to kill King Duncan, and he says: "If we should fail?" Now, if he wasn't using ellipsis there, if he was speaking in full grammatical sentences, he would say, "What if we should fail at killing King Duncan?" But Macbeth has been talking about the fact of killing King Duncan with Lady Macbeth for several sentences now. So Shakespeare was like, "Ellipsis. We don't need to make it that repetitive. Nobody talks like that, repeating themselves over and over and over again." So he's just used ellipsis and he's shortened it.

What this means is, sometimes ellipsis can make something hard to understand if we haven't followed the conversation correctly. If I hadn't followed that Macbeth conversation and recognized that what they're talking about is the act of killing King Duncan, I might have read "If we should fail?" and thought, "What are you on about, mate? Fail at what?" And I would have been confused. So with understanding sentences where he's used ellipsis, you're going to need to make sure you followed it.

Now, again, you don't need to remember the term "ellipsis." You don't need to start analyzing ellipsis. You just need to keep in mind that one of the strategies for understanding Shakespeare when you've got a phrase or a sentence and you're like, "I'm not sure what they're referring to, I'm not sure what they're talking about right now"—the reason for that could be because Shakespeare has assumed you're following the conversation, because he thinks you can speak the same English as him. He has no idea he's still being studied 400 years later, because it would probably blow his mind how many students have to study him every year. He just thinks you can follow what he's saying and you don't need him to repeat himself. So if you're suddenly seeing a reference to a "we," or a "he," or a "this," or a "that," and you're like, "Wait, what are you talking about?", you need to go back up in the conversation and be like: "Okay, what were they talking about? And therefore, what could this line be referring to?"

The contractions can be a pain, because they can sometimes make it hard to understand words that actually you totally know, because Shakespeare would contract words that aren't meant to be contracted. Just have a look at some of these examples. I mean, will you look at that? Do you recognize those words? To be fair, I am a fan of Shakespeare's contractions. I am always a fan of shortening how we speak and making it faster. Like, I'm well up for swapping "never" down to "ne'er."

So, okay, I've just revealed the first one: that is "never." "Oft" is often. "Know'st" is knows. "'Tis" is it is. "'T" could be like "in," or "it," or "is," depending on the sentence you're dealing with. So he often contracted these words, not out of laziness like I would, but because again, he's writing poetry. If he needs a one-syllable word and he wants to use "never," and "never" is a two-syllable word, his clever trick was: well, cut the "v." It is also partly just, historically speaking, how they spoke back then; it's the way the language worked. But it was also just a trick for him as a poet, too.

For you trying to comprehend Shakespeare, you just have to ask yourself: okay, what's he contracting here? What's that letter that he's cut out? What's the two words he's smooshed together? And you can usually figure it out just from looking at the sentence. When you see "'tis" being used, you can usually figure out it's "it is."

Another thing to keep in mind is that the word "don't" didn't exist back then. "Don't" just flat-out wasn't a contraction. And even then, the words "do" and "did" were very uncommon. Instead of "don't," what people in Shakespeare's time would have said is "be not." So instead of saying "Don't be scared," he would have said, "Be not afeard." Instead of saying "What did he look like?", he would have said, "What looked he like?" Instead of saying "How long did she stay?", he would have said, "Stayed she long?" So sometimes when you're trying to understand his sentences, it's a simple case of asking yourself: okay, if I was to translate this into modern English, would I be putting a "don't," or a "did," or a "do" in there? And then that would all just make a lot of sense.

You also have to keep in mind that just because of the fact that Shakespeare is—I can't even think how many years old, I'm going to say 400 because that feels about right, but I feel like it's actually longer than that—because of how old it is, there's going to be archaic language in there. That means basically words that we don't use anymore. No one is expecting you to know those. No one is expecting you to be fluent in Jacobean English. So in these kinds of situations, sometimes you just have to use a glossary. You have to Google it, you have to research it, there's no way around it. You're never going to know every single word he uses; no one is expecting you to. Do not be afraid of using a glossary. Do not be afraid of looking things up when you just don't know what a word means.

That being said, there are some classic archaic words that are just useful to know because they come up in his work a lot. Know any of these?

• Anon: right now, or can also be like "I'm coming," that kind of thing. That's why in Romeo and Juliet, when she's being called by the nurse, Juliet's like, "Anon, anon! I'm coming, I'm coming." It's got that kind of feel to it.

• Ere: before.

• Wherefore: why. This is another really important one, actually, for Romeo and Juliet, because that classic line: "O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?" You have no idea how many people misunderstand that line. They think what Juliet is saying is, "Romeo, Romeo, where are you, Romeo?", because she's alone on her balcony and she's just met him and she's like, "Oh, Romeo, I miss you so much." That's not what she's saying. She's saying, "Romeo, Romeo, why are you Romeo? Why are you a Montague? Why are you the one man I'm not allowed to love?" So, actually, a lot of people misunderstand that line because they don't know that "wherefore" actually means "why."

• Another classic one, again with Romeo and Juliet—I've got Romeo and Juliet on the brain today—is would, meaning "wish." I'm pretty sure this is Romeo and Juliet; I might be getting my plays mixed up, but there's a line in Romeo and Juliet where I'm pretty sure Romeo says, "I would I were a glove upon that hand." And what he's saying is, "I wish I was a glove upon that hand. I wish I was a glove on Juliet's hand. I wish I was touching her, I wish I was caring for her"—that kind of thing. Sometimes "would" can mean "wish."

• And then you've also got prithee, which just means "please." Nice and simple.

I've just got two more ways that Shakespeare uses his language that can be challenging. And by understanding these, you're going to really do yourself a favor. That being said, they're also the hardest.

And the first is an allusion. An allusion is an expression designed to call something to mind without mentioning it explicitly, like a passing reference to something. For example, in one of my YouTube videos, for some strange reason I did a maths paper, and it went about as well as you can expect an English teacher doing a maths paper to go. And during that video I say, "Hmm..."—I'm trying to decide on what I should do and what mathematical strategy to apply—and I say, "Hmm, to do this or to do that, that is the question." There, I am not explicitly referring to Shakespeare, but it's like a reference to Shakespeare: "To be or not to be, that is the question."

Let me show you what I mean with a Shakespeare example. This example comes from Macbeth, and after King Duncan has been killed, Macduff calls out to the others and says: "Up, up, and see the great doom's image!" Now, first of all, "up" is ellipsis: it's "get up out of bed, get up out of bed." And "the great doom" is the allusion. "The great doom" is an allusion to Doomsday, which was the end of times as it's described in Abrahamic religions. By referencing the great doom when talking about the death of King Duncan, we can understand that Macduff is suggesting that the death of King Duncan is like the end of the world.

Allusions in Shakespeare are incredibly common under three specific areas. Number one is the Bible. As with this example, if you know your Bible really well—New and Old Testament—man, are you going to understand his allusions well. He constantly makes suggestions at various passages from the Bible, stories from the Bible, Jesus and Judas—loads, because of course he was raised as a devout Christian. His audience are devout Christians. So he knows that he can make these references to the Bible and his audience are going to understand them. We in the modern 21st century, who perhaps haven't yet got around to reading the Bible, might not understand them. And that is why, when it comes to allusions, again, you have to do your research. You're not going to know about "the great doom's image" on your own; you need someone who knows that allusion is there to tell you about it. Don't be afraid of doing the research, Googling things, looking things up to double-check what they are referring to.

The other two big groups are Greek gods and Roman gods. Man, does he refer to those guys a lot. You don't even have to know it off the top of your head necessarily; you do need to know for your revision, though. Look it up in advance of your tests. Make sure you know who those different gods are and, therefore, what Shakespeare is suggesting by referencing them. For example, just another Macbeth example: right at the start of the play, Macbeth gets referred to as "Bellona's bridegroom." Now, Bellona is the Roman goddess of war, and a bridegroom is like a groom, someone you're marrying. By having that allusion to Bellona, Shakespeare is saying, you know, Macbeth is so good at fighting, he's so good at violence, he's worthy of being like a god. So allusions are not something you're going to be able to figure out on your own. You have to do the research to find out what they are. But once you have found out what they are, you're going to be able to comprehend Shakespeare a lot easier.

The final thing you need to keep in mind is metaphors and symbols. Shakespeare is writing poetry, people! That means he is using a metric butt-ton of metaphors, and possibly even more symbolism. It's really common to find that when you're reading a chunk of Shakespeare, you're literally reading back-to-back metaphors.

Let me show you what I mean, again with an example from Macbeth. This is like my favorite of Macbeth's soliloquies, and he says:

• "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, / Creeps in this petty pace from day to day / To the last syllable of recorded time..." — metaphor, personifying tomorrow as creeping in a petty pace.

• "And all our yesterdays have lighted fools / The way to dusty death." — metaphor, personifying yesterdays.

• "Out, out, brief candle!" — symbolism of the candle.

• "Life's but a walking shadow..." — metaphor.

• "...a poor player / That struts and frets his hour upon the stage / And then is heard no more." — metaphor.

• "It is a tale / Told by an idiot..." — metaphor.

• "...full of sound and fury..." — metaphor.

• "...signifying nothing." — metaphor.

Metaphors are obviously an incredible technique to analyze; they're the best. So when you know how to analyze metaphors, you can have an amazing time looking at soliloquies like this, because there is so much to say and you could write a whole Macbeth essay just on—pointing in the wrong direction—just on that soliloquy. But when you're just trying to comprehend Shakespeare, sometimes that can be tough, that can be overwhelming, trying to get to grips with all of these different metaphors. And if you need more help with how to understand and analyze metaphors, you need to go have a look at my video on how to analyze metaphors.