Shakespeare Reading Tips Reading Shakespeare’s plays hasn't always been a stroll through the park for me. It was always a struggle to comprehend certain lines and especially certain words. Instead of giving up and quitting when I was unsure about a phrase, I decided to take action and help myself to better understand. I learned some ways to better myself in my reading and make it easier for the future While reading, there were a couple of times I had to stop and really think about what was being said. Sitting back and just thinking about what the author or speaker is trying to get across helped me to determine what was being said. To also help my comprehension, I chose to reread over previous lines to gain some in text knowledge about what the mood, setting, and other actors are saying. This will help me better to decipher the incomprehensible phrase by having a better feeling of what the tone, and setting might be. Most times I understood the phrases, yet it was the individual words that threw me for a loop. When I was unsure about a word such like “knave” (II. i. 239), I would have to look at the footnotes on the left side of the page. This small definition, or sometimes pictures, helped me to better visualize and comprehend what was happening and being said. However, some copies may not include footnotes to help reader’s comprehension. In that case, looking up the word or phrase in a dictionary or on line will do. But be careful that it is the Shakespearean definition! When you’re checking out the definition, take a sneak peek at some synonyms. If you find a word you know than you can replace that word with the word/phrase in the play that you are unsure about. After all of that and you still have no clue what is being said, try looking up some examples. I find these to be helpful because you can apply the example into certain situations to better visualize what is being said in the play. Once I had all these tricks up my sleeve, I found that reading Shakespeare wasn’t as difficult to read as I once thought.
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Dawson Bartlett:
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