Why is it so hard, Miss/Sir?
It isn't, really. The stories are all pretty straightforward.
The history plays are all about, well, history. Mostly English kings.
In the tragedies, the main character dies (sorry - spoiler alert), usually because he (and once or twice, she) has done something stupid.
In the comedies, at least one couple marries in the last scene but they've had to overcome all kinds of problems before they're allowed to actually get married.
There aren't any comedies about kings - though the Henry IV plays come close before Hal becomes Henry V when he has to turn into the best king England has ever had and lots of Richard III is very funny indeed.
Almost everything else is a fairy story.
And there's Measure for Measure which doesn't really fit into any of the other categories though you could call it a back comedy.
But it looks hard on the page.
This is because most of the plays are mostly written in blank verse - in Shakespeare's case iambic pentameter.
It's also because almost every version you will see will have a billion notes explaining what it means. If it needs all those notes, it must be hard, obviously. After all, how many other things you read is accompanied by loads of notes?
And the language is really, really difficult to understand.
Except it isn't. A good exercise is to take a longish speech and make a note of every word you don't understand.
Then find yourself a dictionary and look those words up. They will almost always be in a modern dictionary. A few won't and some will have changed their meaning over time, but very few words which Shakespeare uses aren't still part of modern English. If that happens, you need shakespeares words
What is difficult is the grammar and sometimes the punctuation. The words are often not in the order we expect. This is partly because of the verse form and partly because grammar has changed in the last 400 years. Word order can be different - there's a very long joke about this in The Taming of the Shrew - so can be confusing. If a line doesn't seem to make sense, try swapping the word order around a bit and it probably will. If it still doesn't make sense, blame the printer. There are lots of mistakes in the transcriptions of the plays, but there isn't any way of knowing what they are till we find Shakespeare's original foul papers, which no-one has so far!
The punctuation definitely is not Shakespeare's own. In the quarto and folio versions the punctuation is the type setter's. In modern editions, it's whoever is credited as the editor. A very famous short line from 'Macbeth' has a variety of punctuation, depending upon the editor, so is it:
We fail!
We fail?
We fail.
We fail,
All those versions exist and every version turns Lady Macbeth into a different character.
iambic pentameter - a line of verse with 10 beats which mimics the human heartbeat and is the natural rhythm of spoken English. "Your neck is filthy. Don't you ever wash?" Perfect iambic pentameter overheard on a bus.
Iambic pentameter isn't the same as blank verse. Blank verse is simply verse which doesn't rhyme. Romeo and Juliet has lots of rhyming iambic pentameter.
foul papers - Shakespeare's handwritten original scripts - none of which has ever been found. There is one bit of script in Shakespeare's handwriting, though. If you're in London you can see it at The British Library.
The history plays are all about, well, history. Mostly English kings.
In the tragedies, the main character dies (sorry - spoiler alert), usually because he (and once or twice, she) has done something stupid.
In the comedies, at least one couple marries in the last scene but they've had to overcome all kinds of problems before they're allowed to actually get married.
There aren't any comedies about kings - though the Henry IV plays come close before Hal becomes Henry V when he has to turn into the best king England has ever had and lots of Richard III is very funny indeed.
Almost everything else is a fairy story.
And there's Measure for Measure which doesn't really fit into any of the other categories though you could call it a back comedy.
But it looks hard on the page.
This is because most of the plays are mostly written in blank verse - in Shakespeare's case iambic pentameter.
It's also because almost every version you will see will have a billion notes explaining what it means. If it needs all those notes, it must be hard, obviously. After all, how many other things you read is accompanied by loads of notes?
And the language is really, really difficult to understand.
Except it isn't. A good exercise is to take a longish speech and make a note of every word you don't understand.
Then find yourself a dictionary and look those words up. They will almost always be in a modern dictionary. A few won't and some will have changed their meaning over time, but very few words which Shakespeare uses aren't still part of modern English. If that happens, you need shakespeares words
What is difficult is the grammar and sometimes the punctuation. The words are often not in the order we expect. This is partly because of the verse form and partly because grammar has changed in the last 400 years. Word order can be different - there's a very long joke about this in The Taming of the Shrew - so can be confusing. If a line doesn't seem to make sense, try swapping the word order around a bit and it probably will. If it still doesn't make sense, blame the printer. There are lots of mistakes in the transcriptions of the plays, but there isn't any way of knowing what they are till we find Shakespeare's original foul papers, which no-one has so far!
The punctuation definitely is not Shakespeare's own. In the quarto and folio versions the punctuation is the type setter's. In modern editions, it's whoever is credited as the editor. A very famous short line from 'Macbeth' has a variety of punctuation, depending upon the editor, so is it:
We fail!
We fail?
We fail.
We fail,
All those versions exist and every version turns Lady Macbeth into a different character.
iambic pentameter - a line of verse with 10 beats which mimics the human heartbeat and is the natural rhythm of spoken English. "Your neck is filthy. Don't you ever wash?" Perfect iambic pentameter overheard on a bus.
Iambic pentameter isn't the same as blank verse. Blank verse is simply verse which doesn't rhyme. Romeo and Juliet has lots of rhyming iambic pentameter.
foul papers - Shakespeare's handwritten original scripts - none of which has ever been found. There is one bit of script in Shakespeare's handwriting, though. If you're in London you can see it at The British Library.
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