Why do we read Shakespeare?

[Scarlet72]

I'm a student from Scotland, I love reading books and I love watching movies and playing games.
Currently in class we are reading Othello, one of William Shakespeare's great tragedies. My teacher was telling us that for higher [a qualification] english, she believes that things like the movie Psycho and similar films - which other classes were studying - should not be taught as she did not consider them literature. She didn't say this in so many words, but the implication was certainly there.
The thought then struck me...
Why are we reading shakespeare? Why is he considered literature, and not other more modern writers considered shakespeare?
Why is it that you can go out and buy a collection of shakespeare's dramas to read? I would never imagine someone sitting down to read their new copy of the script of E.T or Star Wars; so why do people read shakespeare - instead of watching his plays as they were intended to be seen?

I want to hear your opinions on the matter, should we be reading scripts as if they were novels? Or should we be leaving them on the stages and film set where they belong?

[Jackson Richardson]

I'll be interested to see replies, as I've often said here that Shakespeare wrote to be acted not read.

However it is poetry and reading the text allows us to appreciate aspects which we would miss just listening to it.

[Lemonade]

I think it has to do with the fact that it can be read as stories, most scripts are boring as f*ck to read, trust me. Shakespeare's 'scripts' are very readable and even enjoyable. And he also wrote lots of poetry not meant to be acted, so the line between them is vague.

[Mohammad Ahmad]

It is not over all a silly question it is rather a good question; reading a Shakespeare teaching us a dated period of a well-known poetry.
His print yet is not forgotten as others pillar characters all over the world.
We need his sympathetic melody; in one word, I wish called him the father of poetry since the school he created still moderating and still glimmering crossing all the generations passed and yet.
--
Julius Kaiser play
CASSIUS
And why should Caesar be a tyrant then?
Poor man! I know he would not be a wolf
But that he sees the Romans are but sheep.
He were no lion were not Romans hinds


From this short segment, I made a visual sense because everywhere there are the dictatorships and puritans

[JCamilo]

Well, how are Psycho and other movies used? As movies, watching it? Then, well, they are not really literature. Are you reading their script? Well, then they are literature, just not that good.

[YesNo]

It occurred to me that I have never read a movie script. Searching it looks like they are available: http://www.imsdb.com/ These should be most useful for people who would like to write scripts, not for people who want to watch movies.

I agree with the OP. I think students should be watching Shakespeare's plays, not reading them. In the good old days, like when I was in high school, there were no easy ways to watch these plays. Today that technological problem has been solved. A student today should be able to get a better exposure to Shakespeare by watching videos of his plays or hearing his poetry read than by reading them. If one thinks about it, the point should be to personally enjoy these works of art, not log how many texts one has consumed.

[qimissung]

They understand them better wen they can watch the movie. To study the play (in high school at any rate) you only need to study and analyze select passages of his luminous poetry-I got that advice from an AP teacher-then watch the movie. And discuss and write, etc.

[JCamilo]

I do not know about the scripts in the link, but many scripts can bring camera/cinematography guiidelines which break the dialogue, making the reading less pleasant. Also, movies have a strong visual element, while plays dont, so the play text is a better reading. This adding, Shakespeare scripts had very few scene or acting cues, so you go after the dialogues, which you can easily read as you read a poem, because, well, he just wrote verses. But it is only him, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Chekhov, Racine, Ariano Suassuna, Seneca, Marlowe, Schiller, Euripedes and a few others wrote great plays which I loved to read and I do not think I have watched even 10% of those plays.

[Calidore]

Another simple reason may be that any of Shakespeare's scripts can be had and read freely anywhere, anytime. Finding and watching a performance takes more effort (and usually money). Plus, the scripts can come with explanatory notes and essays.

[bounty]

in fairness, it's not just Shakespeare that that question might be asked about. I can recall reading the crucible and death of a salesman for instance. I suspect all of us have had plays as assigned readings.

I would add this too---reading engages the mind in a way that viewing does not. though I do agree in general, if you're going to make me read Shakespeare, then let's also go to a production or at least watch one on video too.

[YesNo]

It's not just Shakespeare. Using texts in general has changed.

For example, when I was young, if I wanted to find out what that constellation was in the sky, I would have to read a sky atlas. It required some skill to read that text, a skill I never mastered. What do I do today? I open the Google Sky Map app on my phone, point it to the star-planet-whatever in question and it has been identified. I finally know where those planets are.

Speaking of maps, does anyone remember that maps in general were contained in texts called an "atlas"? Even a bus schedule required a textual reading skill that I was never good at. But today? Plug in the address and even if you are walking, someone will tell you to how to get there and when to make that turn, which bus to take, when it will arrive next. Who reads maps anymore?

Are we better off today without these texts? Well, I get lost less often.

[Helga]

Shakespeare is a part of the literature canon and I think it's important when you study literature at any level to read works thought of as canon, that being said I think there are many modern plays we should (and do) read. When I was in my first year at university we read a few new(ish) plays, Sarah Kane for example and Tom Stoppard. I enjoy reading plays almost as much as watching them performed and in my school we always get the script to read even though we will see the performance.

I think it is wrong when any teacher acts like something is less worthy of being read or valued as good literature, I remember one class we read the first book of the Druid Chronicles and some students found it terrible to be forced to read it as part of a literature course but the teacher just said 'I read all kinds of books'. This was easy to read and in parts funny and a very good study of imagination (and the problems of using wikipedia), maybe not part of the canon but not all books need to be, or could be.

Back to Shakespeare, when I saw Macbeth performed Lady Macbeth's speech about a suckling infant didn't strike me as hard as it did when I read it and my imagination was flowing. Sometimes it is better to read and get all the information, you might miss out on a thing or two in a performance.

[Eiseabhal]

I read maps. Place names tell stories. Good maps have more info than apps. WS wrote his sonnets to be read and his scripts to be acted but despite what was said about technology there are lots of people in the first world who have never seen a play by WS - even if they took part in a reading of a play in school. And as for the third world well ... you need to have literacy to read.

[JCamilo]

Well, Yes/No reads maps, he just uses another support: digital, but it is reading. Unrelated to watching a play where you do not read at all.

[cacian]

maybe it is because it is the one lengthy book that literally goes on about tragedy being the center of literary achievement

[Scarlet72]

Good maps have more info than apps.
The Ordanence Survey being the perfect example in terms of detail, Atlases being more facts/knowledge about a place, and what everything actually means.

[YesNo]

Well, Yes/No reads maps, he just uses another support: digital, but it is reading. Unrelated to watching a play where you do not read at all.

I agree with Eiseabhal that maps are not obsolete and they can give more information. I particularly like reading maps that show historical or geographic trends.

I also agree with JCamillo that I am "reading" the app. That comment surprises me in a way. Perhaps I could generalize reading to include listening to the directions from the GPS that tell me when to make a turn or how far to proceed down a street. It is not normally what we think of as "reading", but it gathers information from a source that is not the actual street in front of me. Perhaps we could call all of these devices "texts" since they project onto something else what it is we will be experiencing subjectively.

[mortalterror]

It occurred to me that I have never read a movie script. Searching it looks like they are available: http://www.imsdb.com/ These should be most useful for people who would like to write scripts, not for people who want to watch movies.

I agree with the OP. I think students should be watching Shakespeare's plays, not reading them. In the good old days, like when I was in high school, there were no easy ways to watch these plays. Today that technological problem has been solved. A student today should be able to get a better exposure to Shakespeare by watching videos of his plays or hearing his poetry read than by reading them. If one thinks about it, the point should be to personally enjoy these works of art, not log how many texts one has consumed.

The only movie script I've ever read was Star Wars: A New Hope. It was basically everything that existed on screen but without the visuals. I liked it less than the movie. The novelization I actually preferred because it added things like descriptions which gave my imagination something extra to play with. Keep in mind I read both when I was 9, so I wasn't the best judge of aesthetics. The only other time I've read parts of scripts were instances when the film never got made. Stanley Kubrick died without ever lensing a frame of his Napoleon script.

I have to disagree with you about watching Shakespeare's plays over reading them. There is nothing worse than watching bad Shakespeare. In fact, I would go so far as to state that Shakespeare is the most bungled author on stage or in cinema. Every no talent actor, director, and set designer wants a crack at him. Since the words are only about twenty or thirty percent of a performance, this becomes a recipe for mediocrity, where Shakespeare's excellent lines create an awful contrast with the shallow banality of the rest of the production. Baz Luhrmann's production of Romeo + Juliet starring Leonardo DiCaprio should be listed as a crime against humanity by the Hague. Access to the text is critical to deconstructing how the language works. The actual play has so many other components that isolating the excellent words is complicated by all the other distractions going on be they sets, costumes, makeup, acting, music, props, lighting, dancing, or special effects.

[YesNo]

I agree that some performances of Shakespeare can turn his tragedies into comedies and make his comedies rank lower than Mall Cop 2. The scripts are still valuable. I also need subtitles when watching his plays so I am still reading them for better understanding. However, watching even a badly performed play is better than only reading a Wikipedia summary of the plot although that summary is still valuable. When I was in high school there were few alternatives to reading the script. Now there are many ways to approach those plays.

For some songs that I enjoy, I search out a YouTube version with the lyrics printed. This does help me focus on the words and is closer to reading than just listening to the song.

[wwparkinson]

Shakespeare's plays were originally meant to be experienced from the stage-- and I think they still are. Alot of the drama of the plays, etc. are moved by the stage.

Film scripts rely alot on the visual, in fact, I think it was George Lucas who said the writing in Star Wars took a backseat to the set design, costumes, action, etc. With Shakespeare this isn't necessarily the case, though alot of the plot-moving action in, say Hamlet, takes place on the stage or cues, and not necessarily in the prose (like conversely Don Quixote).

I would say that I often read Shakespeare plays before going to see them performed or in film, and that I am able to follow it much better because the language moves fast and has alot of dense wordplay or words that have become arcane. Maybe in his time this went by easier, but I've read quite a bit of Shakespeare, and if I haven't read the play before going to it I sometimes get lost or there are stretches where I don't know precisely what they are talking about, or small things go over my head.

[Danik 2016]

I think that, even at a time when people hardly read books anymore, Shakespeare still has the last word about the human being. It is all there in those plays and poems written so many centuries ago. They are about human passions, human conquests and losses and the irony of fate. They tell of kings and clowns, of men and women, about the "real" world and the stuff dreams are made of. And all written in a language cintilating with metaphers and word games.
These are plays to read and enact.

[mona amon]

I'm a student from Scotland, I love reading books and I love watching movies and playing games.
Currently in class we are reading Othello, one of William Shakespeare's great tragedies. My teacher was telling us that for higher [a qualification] english, she believes that things like the movie Psycho and similar films - which other classes were studying - should not be taught as she did not consider them literature. She didn't say this in so many words, but the implication was certainly there.
The thought then struck me...
Why are we reading shakespeare? Why is he considered literature, and not other more modern writers considered shakespeare?
Why is it that you can go out and buy a collection of shakespeare's dramas to read? I would never imagine someone sitting down to read their new copy of the script of E.T or Star Wars; so why do people read shakespeare - instead of watching his plays as they were intended to be seen?

I want to hear your opinions on the matter, should we be reading scripts as if they were novels? Or should we be leaving them on the stages and film set where they belong?

I remember reading a script version of E.T. (not the actual script, but a more descriptive version) to my son as a bedtime story, and it was very enjoyable. We were especially struck by a line that went,"And he was...something...something... million light years from home." There are many novels that have been made into movies that surpassed the original text, but I cannot recall any instance of it happening the other way around - no great novels have been made from great movies!

In Shakespeare's case he did write with the direct intention of them being performed, he being part of an acting troupe and all, and there is an unbroken tradition of his plays being performed on stage from his time till now, but the fact is the plays work very well as texts that can be read, and that is why we are reading Shakespeare - not because they are great plays (which they are) but because they are also great literary texts. Millions of readers down the ages have considered them the best thing they've ever read. I'm curious to know whether people think the plays (when performed well of course) are the best plays ever. For myself, I've never seen a single performance of a Shakespeare play, so I do not have an opinion.

[YesNo]

I'm curious to know whether people think the plays (when performed well of course) are the best plays ever. For myself, I've never seen a single performance of a Shakespeare play, so I do not have an opinion.

I have seen two live performances of Midsummer Night's Dream long ago which I thought were entertaining enough for me but were probably performed poorly. I've seen ten or so of his plays as videos over the past few years, including Midsummer Night's Dream, since the library has them. If I compare those videos to modern movies, I think I would rather watch a modern movie, but then I am a cultural cretin, so my opinion doesn't really count.

Supposedly I read Hamlet in high school long ago in the technological dark ages when the only way to experience Shakespeare was to read texts. I got an undeserved A in the class. It wasn't until I saw a DVD of Hamlet a few years ago that I realized he died at the end along with a bunch of others. (I hope I didn't spoil the ending for anyone.)

[Adonais]

Because Shakespeare wrote to be read as well as performed. That should be quite obvious to anyone who has studied his works.

The assertion that Shakespeare should only be watched is terribly one-sided and mutilates half of the artistry of his drama by ripping Shakespeare out of the literary tradition of poets such as Ovid, Petrarch, Chaucer etc. which he was consciously working within and reshaping on the stage.

It's basically philistinism by people who don't care about good verse.

[OrphanPip]

Because Shakespeare wrote to be read as well as performed. That should be quite obvious to anyone who has studied his works.

The assertion that Shakespeare should only be watched is terribly one-sided and mutilates half of the artistry of his drama by ripping Shakespeare out of the literary tradition of poets such as Ovid, Petrarch, Chaucer etc. which he was consciously working within and reshaping on the stage.

It's basically philistinism by people who don't care about good verse.

I'm not sure that's an entirely accurate statement though. Most of the plays were not published to be read during his lifetime. However, some like Hamlet are clearly too long to have ever been performed entirely on the Elizabethan stage. A case could be made that Shakespeare did intend his plays to be primarily performed, since while he did write poetry he never wrote a closet drama (like those of Seneca) which are intended to be read and not performed. Just because something contains poetry does not mean it was intended to be read, poetry can be an oral tradition like that of Homer. Jonson's masques were also likely not intended to be read, the poetry was conceived of as part of a spectacle alongside Inigo Jones' presumably expert sets and costumes.

Now I do agree it's silly to say that one should never read Shakespeare and only experience it as a play. However, I also think you lose a lot when reading the language and not appreciating it as something conceived of as part of a performance. It's always possible to break down elements of a work and comment on the parts on their own merits.

[Adonais]

I'm not sure that's an entirely accurate statement though. Most of the plays were not published to be read during his lifetime.

Actually no, most of them were. For example, Hamlet was published in 1603 and King Lear in 1608, both probably very soon after they were first written and performed.


A case could be made that Shakespeare did intend his plays to be primarily performed, since while he did write poetry he never wrote a closet drama (like those of Seneca) which are intended to be read and not performed. Just because something contains poetry does not mean it was intended to be read, poetry can be an oral tradition like that of Homer. Jonson's masques were also likely not intended to be read, the poetry was conceived of as part of a spectacle alongside Indigo Jones' presumably expert sets and costumes.

Except as you say, Hamlet is too long to be performed in its entirety. Indeed, the scripts we have of Shakespeare's plays would likely have been chopped and changed for individual performance (as they are for performances nowadays). As for Homer, Archaic Greece was an illiterate society with no literary tradition, so I don't really see the comparison as useful.

I don't disagree that Shakespeare was writing plays for performance instead of closet dramas, that's self-evident. My point is that within these dramas he was at the same time consciously writing a piece of literature. That's part of Shakespeare's genius to be able to operate on two levels at once.


Now I do agree it's silly to say that one should never read Shakespeare and only experience it as a play. However, I also think you lose a lot when reading the language and not appreciating it as something conceived of as part of a performance. It's always possible to break down elements of a work and comment on the parts on their own merits.

I agree that something can be missed when considered without a performance. But really, Shakespeare's language is far more a literary than a dramatic construction, and Shakespeare is a far greater poet than he is a dramatist. If anything, more will be missed by only watching Shakespeare and never reading him than vice-versa.

A good example is something like in Act 1 Scene 5 of Romeo and Juliet, where beginning "If I profane with my unworthiest hand" the dialogue between Romeo and Juliet is in the form of a sonnet. Shakespeare is playing a literary joke here, and it's one the viewing public would not have been able to get.

[OrphanPip]

Actually no, most of them were. For example, Hamlet was published in 1603 and King Lear in 1608, both probably very soon after they were first written and performed.

Only half of them were published before he died, and it's unknown if Shakespeare had a direct role in the publication of any of the quarto editions. If Shakespeare cared a lot about the textual aspect we might expect him to get involved in the publishing like Ben Jonson did. Yet, we don't really have much indication of his interest in the textual life of the plays after they were performed. We are also left to deal with the question of the irregularity in the publishing. Even taking the example from Romeo and Juliet, the first published quarto of the play is missing large portions of the play and contains several errors. Most scholars think this quarto was reconstructed from an actor's memory. The second quarto at least has some direct connection to Shakespeare because it seems to have come from a rough draft or "foul papers" version of the play, but even that edition is incomplete as it's missing stage directions that are found in the first quarto. To get to the modern polished Romeo and Juliet took editors piecing together changes made to the draft that managed to be recorded for the first quarto. If Shakespeare wanted Romeo and Juliet to be read as a piece of literature why did he do such a poor job of ensuring his literary vision was published as he imagined it. Jonson went out of his way to make polished copies for his publishers.

Of course I agree that the text can be read as a great piece of literature, but I don't think this was necessarily intentional.

[JCamilo]

The best point is that publishing was something quite different in that time than to us now. Publishing his plays would have little effect on his ambition to be recognized as a great poet, so it is unlikely he bothered to pursue it hard, while he probally wouldn't ignore his own skill to use poetry while writting them.

But this is silly, people read dramas for pleasure since ever, people write verses as if they are meant to be only read and never performed almost as long. We are not that dumb to not understand (or imagine) the action between the lines of Shakespeare's plays and his poetic skill was enough to make the text interesting.

[ennison]

What makes you think the educated part of his audience wouldn't have got it. Course they were written to be performed.

[JCamilo]

who said they got it after it was performed?

Shakespeare is complex, it is hard to "go it" even for the educated audience today. So is Dante, and dante didnt write to be perfomed.

[mortalterror]

I have seen two live performances of Midsummer Night's Dream long ago which I thought were entertaining enough for me but were probably performed poorly. I've seen ten or so of his plays as videos over the past few years, including Midsummer Night's Dream, since the library has them. If I compare those videos to modern movies, I think I would rather watch a modern movie, but then I am a cultural cretin, so my opinion doesn't really count.

Most Shakespeare movies are pretty lousy and aren't worth watching. He's been adapted to the screen more than 1,100 times, because his works are in the public domain. He's probably the only bankable writer which studios can use for free and people have heard of. That means there's more diversity of interpretation to performances of his plays than those of any other author. That also means one has to sort through a lot of dreck to find gold.

If I were to pick the best screen adaptations of Shakespeare, not counting Akira Kurosawa's Ran or Throne of Blood because they only make use of the plots, I'd rank them:

1.Hamlet 1996 by Kenneth Branagh
2.Othello 1952 by Orson Welles
3.Julius Caesar 1953 with John Gielgud
4.Henry V 1989 by Kenneth Branagh
5.Macbeth 1971 by Roman Polanski
6.Titus 1999 with Anthony Hopkins
7.Richard III 1995 with Ian McKellen
8.Much Ado About Nothing 1993 by Kenneth Branagh
9.The Taming of the Shrew 1967 with Elizabeth Taylor
10.Chimes at Midnight 1965 by Orson Welles
11.A Midsummer Night's Dream 1996 by the Royal Shakespeare Company
12.Twelfth Night 1988 by Kenneth Branagh

For the rest, I'd mostly go with the complete works of Shakespeare series performed for British television by the RSC from '78-'85, and which every library should have a copy of. However, I haven't seen the new Coriolanus and Macbeth which from all accounts sound very good. The Orson Welles Macbeth looks promising, and I generally hate Peter Brook, Laurence Olivier, or Zeffirelli productions, which most other's seem to love.

[ennison]

He didn't make his living publishing his plays nor turning them into "movies". They were performed. That's how he and his mates earned a crust.

[YesNo]

1.Hamlet 1996 by Kenneth Branagh
2.Othello 1952 by Orson Welles
3.Julius Caesar 1953 with John Gielgud
4.Henry V 1989 by Kenneth Branagh
5.Macbeth 1971 by Roman Polanski
6.Titus 1999 with Anthony Hopkins
7.Richard III 1995 with Ian McKellen
8.Much Ado About Nothing 1993 by Kenneth Branagh
9.The Taming of the Shrew 1967 with Elizabeth Taylor
10.Chimes at Midnight 1965 by Orson Welles
11.A Midsummer Night's Dream 1996 by the Royal Shakespeare Company
12.Twelfth Night 1988 by Kenneth Branagh


I saw 6 and 9 in the above list. They were well done.

Unlike a lot of action films where the good guys beat the bad buys after the bad guys show how bad they are, in Titus Andronicus it is hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys. They're all bad.

I'm trying to remember how the shrew was tamed, perhaps by despairing of ever being able to tame her, but I do recall the scene where Elizabeth Taylor starts taming the other shrews herself at the end.

I may have seen 11 as well. However, the two teenagers in the movie Tamara Drewe reminded me of Puck and Oberon.

[mortalterror]

Checking my papers, a long time ago I wrote an essay on the 1935 film version of A Midsummer Night's Dream. The concluding paragraph is relevant to our discussion since it sums up why reading the original text is often superior to viewing a cinematic version of the text:

In his critique of an 1816 version of this play Hazlitt wrote “Oh, ye scene-shifters, ye scene-painters, ye machinists and dress-makers, ye manufacturers of moon and stars…ye musical composers… This is your triumph; it is not ours. (Calderwood, p.xxi)” He was referring to the way Shakespeare’s play had become a secondary text in the performance. I concur with his opinion. People go to a Shakespearean play to hear the words of the bard. It is in poor taste for a director to cut out words or bowdlerise them so that he may have more time for his music and ballets. This film won an Oscar for best cinematography. It had wonderful make up and costumes. The special effects were interesting, though mostly the cameraman just double exposed the film to give the fairies a transparent quality. There was all sorts of pageantry and wire work. But this is all eye candy. As Sidney Carroll put it “No expense has been spared with either costumes or scenery to completely eliminate Shakespeare from the picture (Jorgens, p.22).” There are two types of film: narrative film which focuses on telling a story, and spectacle film. This film is simply a spectacle. It’s appeal is the same as a juggling act, or a martial arts film. Shakespeare’s text was just a Christmas tree for Reinhardt to hang ornaments on until the original tree was barely visible.

[YesNo]

“Oh, ye scene-shifters, ye scene-painters, ye machinists and dress-makers, ye manufacturers of moon and stars…ye musical composers… This is your triumph; it is not ours. (Calderwood, p.xxi)” He was referring to the way Shakespeare’s play had become a secondary text in the performance.

One can look at all the different performances as "texts" along with the actual script. Make a video of the play and store it in the cloud for people to view later is another type of text or objectification. These things are not the reality itself which I see as only one aspect of a language reality which may be an aspect of an even larger reality and requires subjectivity for that reality to be present. They are projections of that reality into objects.

The texts are attempts to objectify something that cannot be completely present. They do this by subtracting out our subjectivity so that something, say a computer without subjectivity, can store and even "read" them. This is a useful process, but these texts are not the play. The play isn't present until someone with subjectivity is in the process of experiencing it.

So, I agree. When the play is performed, other people besides Shakespeare get involved in creating the object. Hopefully they add value, but perhaps they don't. They add value to the extent they allow people (who have subjectivity) to better experience the real play.

[Alfonso Espada]

Three reasons from the top of my head.

1. Because he might be required reading.
2. Because we wish to learn his methods.
3. Because we might be curious as to why he is considered great.

[YesNo]

Sometimes required reading isn't actually read.

If I were a high school student today I would take matters into my own hand and watch a video of the play with the text near by just in case something wasn't clear.

[byquist]

One reason are short assertions or statements that stick with you. Such as:

"Age is unnecessary" -- Lear
"Who can control his fate?" -- Othello
"Boy!" -- Coriolanus
"We are such stuff as dreams are made on and our little life is rounded with a sleep." -- Prospero
"I have been thinking how I may compare this prison where I live like unto the world but I cannot do it. Yet I'll hammer it out." -- Richard II
"Blow wind, come wrack; at least we'll die with harness on our back!" -- Macbeth

[noface0711]

I read maps. Place names tell stories. Good maps have more info than apps. WS wrote his sonnets to be read and his scripts to be acted but despite what was said about technology there are lots of people in the first world who have never seen a play by WS - even if they took part in a reading of a play in school. And as for the third world well ... you need to have literacy to read.

[YesNo]

If we take a step back from the original question of the thread, "Why do we read Shakespeare?" we could ask a more basic question, "Why do we read?" Answering that might help us understand what is at stake and help us decide whether we should bother reading Shakespeare or not.

Both questions suggest that "we" are human beings. In order to make sure the answers are complete, we could test them and ask, "Why do zombies read (Shakespeare)?" and "Why do computers read (Shakespeare)?" Our answers why we read (Shakespeare) should be different or our answers are not very good.

[Mohammad Ahmad]

Yet you read on Shakespeare giving memorizing and flashing back to the Elizabethan period, I might be on pleasure if I reveal something, please just hear:
Someone anywhere said that Shakespeare is Iraqi origin, yet I don't puzzle, look often to literature by anyway to read Shakespeare period was not dark period but the first school of literature began from that time, however, we can't gather on or touch on the classical period and all the transformation of upswing jumped yet to minds including the renaissance on poetry in general. Moreover, if we have to do a research on the certain period of Shakespearean glimmering light on literature including his plays, we ought to read all surrounding environment trying to find the beginning of epoch yet anyone could precisely point out its starting line because some of history is gone away which I mean the dated certain period, thus we need more to examine the history and yet not finished

[TheEgyptian]

Great stories, unforgettable characters, beautiful poetry :)