Is Shakespeare difficult to understand?

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A lot of people have trouble understanding Shakespeare. I am a teacher who focuses on Shakespeare a lot in my work with high school and university students. Here are just a few tips that I can give you if you struggle with understanding Shakespeare (I go into a lot more depth on these with my students). 1) Metric Pattern Shakespeare's plays often used a carefully arranged pattern of metre (syllable stresses). His favourite metric pattern is was (still is) called "Iambic Pentametre". If you can find out more about iambic pentametre and how it works then Shakespeare is much easier to understand and much easier to read out loud properly. It also gives you extra information when a character messes up the metre of their line - usually in this cases Shakespeare is suggesting something about the character: either they're not very smart, or they are getting all emotional about something. When Macbeth says that time: "Creeps in this petty pace from day to day" the famous line uses Iambic Pentametre, but in the next line "To the last syllable of recorded time" he messes up the metre because he's starting to get really angry, depressed and scared. 2) Pronouns People get scared when they read THEE, THOU, THY, THINE in Shakespeare because it sounds so formal and old-fashioned. The truth is, those TH~ words are actually the INFORMAL pronouns... In Shakespeare time, if you wanted to be formal you would say YOU or YOUR. Essentially, this is because Y~ pronouns were plural and TH~ pronouns were singular and it is more personal and informal to refer to someone in the singular. Find out more about pronouns because if you understand how these work then you understand a great deal more of Shakespeare's words (and a lot more than most people). When Juliet asks: "Wherefore art THOU Romeo?" she is using informal, personal language. That shows how much they already care about each other, because in those days she would have been expected to talk politely to a boy she had just met. 3) Double Meanings If you're studying Shakespeare, you've probably heard about these already. The thing to remember is that although we call them "DOUBLE" meanings, they don't always end at two meanings. Sometimes there is another third meaning that even the character who says it isn't aware of, but the audience understands. For example, when Hamlet ponders: "To be or not to be" there are a lot of meanings attached to this - some of them are ones that Hamlet doesn't even realise. He is talking about whether to live or die, but he could also be talking about whether he is sane or insane, and he is "foreshadowing" his death later in the play (the audience already knows he's going to die because the play is a tragedy). These are just a few things that you can focus on to make ANY play by Shakespeare a lot more meaningful and a lot easier to understand. Let me know if this helps - or if you have any other tips of your own about how to decipher the bard.