As more and more "modernized" versions of Shakespearean English come on the market (and even make it onto the stage), there is a better way to engage students with Shakespeare's language. Here are some exercises to increase students' understanding and enjoyment of the plays as they were originally created.

Here are some exercises for you to try out to improve your understanding of Shakespeare’s language:

• Select a speech that you find difficult to understand. Read it over several times. Paraphrase it (put it into your own words). What is lost in the “translation”?
• Shakespeare’s syntax can be a challenge to the reader used to email and 30 second sound bytes. Select a speech with difficult syntax—inverted word order, numerous subordinate clauses, etc. Unravel it by identifying the main subject and main verb. What effect does the unusual syntax produce?
• In Hamlet, as in all of Shakespeare’s plays, characters speak in blank verse (that is, unrhymed iambic pentameter, or lines of 10 syllables with alternating unstressed and stressed syllables), prose, and rhymed verse. Make sense of this system examining specific examples.
• With his 25,000-word writing vocabulary, Shakespeare is certain to use some words you don’t know. Select a speech with many difficult words; look them all up. See how that helps your understanding. (Obviously, you are not going to do that with every speech—it would slow your reading down too much; use context and etymological clues if you don’t look a word up.)
• Shakespeare clearly delighted in the use of figurative language—imagery, metaphors, similes, personification, puns, etc. Follow an image strand through several speeches—or the whole play (e.g., clothing, disease). What important ideas are conveyed through this image strand?

(This was a handout for 12^th graders who were reading Hamlet. See Chapter 1 of Toby Widdicombe’s Simply Shakespeare, which I drew on, for further suggestions. Toward the end of the unit each student selected one of Hamlet’s five soliloquies to memorize. One day in class they wrote out their soliloquies and then corrected each other’s; punctuation didn’t count but correct line breaks did. For extra credit they could also recite their soliloquies aloud. A number of students told me afterwards that the project helped them to understand Shakespeare’s language as never before.)