I haven’t been reading Shakespeare for long but I do feel like I have some tips for you, not because I have become an expert, but BECAUSE I was an absolute beginner just two years ago and I’m still a beginner now. I know the struggles very well and I picked up these tips through trial and error. It’s a massive learning curve, throwing myself into Elizabethan English, blank verse and iambic pentameter without a tutor. However, I have gone from the stage of dreading Shakespeare to looking forward to getting into the next play; from ‘I don’t know what’s going on’ to ‘I don’t understand everything but I’m enjoying it’. I think that’s progress right?
Tip #1 Watch Good Shows
The biggest tip I want to share with you is to watch the plays, on stage live or recorded shows on screen. Pick good productions and enjoy! This is my biggest tip because
Firstly, this was how I grew from ‘what’s so great about Shakespeare’ to ‘wow he IS amazing’. That milestone on my Shakespeare journey was watching Lucy Bailey’s Much Ado About Nothing at the Globe Theatre in London in 2022.
Secondly, ever since then, this tip has continued to work every single time. I always watch the plays I read, and without fail it always makes me think deeper and fall in love with the plays more. One example is that I’m most intimidated by the English history plays. But the wonderful Ben Whishaw and just one episode of ‘The Hollow Crown’ convinced me that it’s no big deal, as in, I get it. Kings and Queens may be high and mighty, but they’re still humans just like me.
Thirdly I don’t know if you have this vague idea hovering in your mind that, Shakespeare is THE ultimate in English literature, people spend years or even their lifetimes studying it. So WE also need to take this stuff seriously, and read and study, and get something deep out of it. Yes I try to do that, a little bit, for example, when I read slowly, think carefully, and even make a video about what the image of the eye means in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. But before that happens, I enjoy it as it’s intended by the author, entertainment for all Londoners after a day’s hard labour. If the show was bad, the original audience would have been hissing and swearing. So you have the permission to turn the TV off too. But if the production is good, I bet you won’t be able to get bored with Shakespeare. My uncultured husband falls sleeps in front of Chekhov, but never Shakespeare.
Tip #2 Try different editions
Finding the Oxford School Shakespeare edition was another turning point on my Shakespeare journey. It feels over the top to say that the shape and size of a physical book, how it feels in my hand, and if there’s enough space for me to dump my immediate thoughts down on the page, makes or breaks the deal – but seriously it made a huge difference! As a beginner, I really hated holding the Arden edition and fighting to keep the Oxford World’s Classics open, even though they have excellent essays. The books were not friendly and I felt Shakespeare was not friendly.
Tip #3 Audiobooks
When watching a show is really not possible, listening to audio performances is a great option too. When I come to a play for the first time, I always find an audio performance, most of the time from the BBC Radio Shakespeare productions. I heard David Tennant playing Benedick in Much Ado about Nothing, Andrew Scott playing Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet. They brought the characters to life.
Listening to audio productions is also a good way to get familiar with the lines. Like when I learnt English when I was little, I semi-acquired it over breakfast as well as studying it in the classroom. My mother who doesn’t speak English at all, had the wisdom to play tapes (you remember those things?) of dialogues over breakfast every day. So I absorbed the rhythm and the music of the English language.
I reckon I can do the same with Shakespeare. I’m experimenting with it. I want to be able to recite some of A Midsummer Night’s Dream so I’m listening to it as I sit on the metro or have a shower. I’m familiar enough with the story that I don’t feel like I need to catch every word, or understand every line. I just let it play like music. Maybe one day I’ll speak naturally in iambic pentameter ;)
Tip #4 Johnson’s Dictionary
This is a secret tip. It’s small but powerful. And I wonder how many people out there are aware of this.
Have you heard of Samuel Johnson? He’s one of the most prominent figures in the history of English Literature. I learnt about him from this little book by Jonathan Bate. Among many many impressive things, the two that are related to our video are, that he edited the complete plays of Shakespeare, AND he created an English Dictionary that was groundbreaking in many ways. His dictionary deserves a post of its own. But what has it to do with us? His Dictionary was the first one that looks very much like our dictionary today, a word entry, pronunciation, word histories, a list of definitions and under each definition, examples of the word in use.
Because Samuel Johnson lived about the same time as Jane Austen, in the 18th century. He was about two hundred years closer to Shakespeare than us. So his understanding AND definition of certain words are closer to what Shakespeare’s was. For example, Lady Macbeth reads her husband’s letter:
‘They met me in the day of success, and I have learned by the perfectest report they have more in them than mortal knowledge…’ (Macbeth Act 1 Scene 5)
What is ‘perfectest’ report? If you check it on Google, perfect means ‘having all the required or desirable elements, qualities, or characteristics; as good as it is possible to be’. Which is how we use the word 90% of the time. But in Johnson’s dictionary, firstly it means ‘complete’, secondly ‘fully informed’. So ‘perfectest’ here means ‘the most reliable’. Which is a more helpful and accurate definition than Google and current dictionaries if you’re reading Shakespeare!
So that’s reason 1, the word definition in Johnson’s dictionary is more accurate. Now it gets even better. Take ‘ecstasy’ in Macbeth as an example. After Macbeth killed Duncan and arranged the murder of Banquo, he said to his wife.
Better be with the dead
Whom we, to gain our peace, have sent to peace,
Than on the torture of the mind to lie
In restless ecstasy. Duncan is in his grave.
After life’s fitful fever, he sleeps well;
Treason has done his worst; nor steel nor poison,
Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing
Can touch him further.
Macbeth Act 3 Scene 2
Today ‘ecstasy’ means either ‘an overwhelming feeling of great happiness or joyful excitement’ or ‘an emotional or religious frenzy or trance-like state’. Neither sounds right in this context. If we check it in Johnson’s Dictionary and it has a few meanings:
- Any passion by which the thoughts are absorbed, and in which the mind is for a time lost. Similar to a trance.
- Excessive joy; rapture. Same as the current meaning.
- Enthusiasm; excessive elevation of the mind.
- Excessive grief or anxiety. This is not now used.
- Madness; distraction. This sense is not now in use.
So there are five. Which one is it? You can probably tell by context. But here’s the exciting bit. The second example that’s listed under point 4 is exactly the lines in Macbeth we’ve just read! So we know for certain this is the meaning of the word. ‘Ecstasy’ is not the only case, Dr Johnson used Shakespeare a lot as example. It’s like he compiled the dictionary for readers of Shakespeare! He used other writers as well, like Dryden and Milton. But almost every entry has Shakespeare’s lines listed. What a treasure trove!
I was a very lucky girl. Christmas two years ago I held one of the original copies of Johnson’s Dictionary in my hand. It was beautiful. It was also a few hundred pounds. If you’re intrigued by Johnson’s Dictionary and by this point thinking, I don’t have access to it! Here’s the best bit, the entire Johnson’s Dictionary is digitised and available for free online! I hope you find it useful! I think it’ll be useful not just for Shakespeare but for reading Jane Austen and many classic authors as well.
Tip #5 RSC Learning Zone on YouTube
There’s a channel on YouTube, I wonder if you’re aware, called RSC Shakespeare Learning Zone. It has videos of actors reading through or rehearsing certain scenes; clips from past productions; videos explaining key language terms like what is iambic pentameter, what are shared lines; interviews of people who work in different theatre jobs explaining what they do, from directors to designers. In some of them, I got to watch a voice coach, or a director like Greg Doran at work, interacting with actors. Because it’s mainly aimed at teachers and young people, the videos are mostly short and very accessible.
We have the plays printed on paper and we watch plays on stage or on screen. This is like watching what happens in between, the behind the scenes stuff, how stories and characters are lifted from pages onto stages. It’s fascinating to watch. They don’t upload very often but there are a lot from the past that is worth watching.
A Day of Small Things 