Which is the easiest Shakespeare play?

[kelby_lake]

And which is the hardest to understand?

[Paulclem]

I teach adults GCSE English, (which is the standard sixteen year old's qualification when they finish school), in 30 weeks, so we need an easier text. We do Romeo and Juliet, which doesn't have sub plots, and whose themes are fairly simple.

[kelby_lake]

Yes, Romeo and Juliet's not too hard.

Julius Caeser wasn't too hard either

[xman]

Pericles has to be the hardest to follow and to stomach.

[Beewulf]

At first reading, and without the help a good reference book, I find many of the history plays hard to follow. Once the various factions and characters have been explained, the plays make much more sense.

[LitNetIsGreat]

I think Macbeth is the easiest play to start with. It is relatively short and has no sub plots. It is also one of the Shakespeare "big four". If I was teaching Shakespeare I would definitely go with Macbeth. Romeo and Juliet is very easy too, but I've had a bit too much of that play.

The hardest, I don't know, perhaps one of the history plays.

[Abdiel]

I'd say the easiest is along the lines of Romeo and Juliet, As You Like It, Macbeth, and Julius Caesar.

Among the hardest I'd rank Coriolanus and Hamlet, the former because of the thickness of the language and the strangeness of the hero, the latter because of the depth of the characters and plot, and also because Hamlet has met with so much literary criticism that it's hard to know who's right or wrong or to care why.

[Lokasenna]

What about Merchant?

Sure, it has a subtext, but its relatively easy to spot and a good topic to think about in our post-holocaust world.

[Plumbum]

I've only read a small number of Shakespeare's plays so far, but I've found that Macbeth and Much Ado About Nothing were the easiest for me to read. I'm still not quite the biggest fan of Macbeth, and that's probably because I'm not a huge fan of tragedies in general, but I went through it pretty quickly. I just had to read Much Ado About Nothing recently and it actually was easy to read, and more comical than I would have thought.

[kelby_lake]

I like me tragedies :) The comedies can have lots of side-plots, which confuses things, and the histories can be dry.

[MorpheusSandman]

Macbeth, Julius Caesar, and A Midsummer Night's Dream (I'm surprised nobody's mentioned that one).

[neilgee]

What about Merchant?

Sure, it has a subtext, but its relatively easy to spot and a good topic to think about in our post-holocaust world.

Very good one, Loc. It's the only case with a Shakespeare play where events since the play was written make us see it differently.

Julius Caesar, Dream, Macbeth.