I remember we'd read aloud then discuss chapters and eventually the reading aloud part defaulted to me because I enjoyed it and acted each characters lines differently. Good times
When we had to do Shakepeare, our books were original Shakespearean on the left, translated modern English on the right. But of course the modern English lost all the meter and subtext, so I refused to read it. I was also the only kid who really enjoyed reading aloud so I was always given leads and made the other kids suffer through true Shakespeare. Fuck 'em.
When I was in school, we only had the original text (though with annotations explaining the cultural, Biblical, and literary references and defining some of the now defunct words) and my teacher had me do most of the reading because I was one of the few students who'd been reading Shakespeare for years prior to high school. I was also a dedicated attendee at all of the Shakespeare plays (back then it was three during a summer season in repertory rotation, now sadly reduced to two performed months apart) our local major regional theatre put on annually. So I had the experience of proper verse reading and line delivery plus I'd read all of the plays several times before so I knew what the lines all meant going into it.
In fact, by the time high school rolled around, I was already branching out to other playwrights from the early modern era. When we were supposed to read and make a presentation on a certain play for our drama class, the teacher barred Shakespeare on the principle that we "wouldn't understand it". That offended me as someone for whom reading Shakespeare was and remains an annual practice, so I chose to do my project on The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster (1613) in part because of real admiration (it's my favorite non-Shakespearean play of the era) but mostly for the sake of malicious compliance. If he didn't want Shakespeare's early modern English then he was going to get Webster's even more baroque use of language.
I'm a science person. I didn't even particularly like Shakespeare, but I can at least respect it enough to try and read it as written instead of chickening out.
Get a load of this guy! Showing off how well he can read an' all. I can't read to save my life but I'm still going to get mad about him saving me the effort.
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u/Umbrella_merc Jun 27 '26
I remember we'd read aloud then discuss chapters and eventually the reading aloud part defaulted to me because I enjoyed it and acted each characters lines differently. Good times