Summit Ministries

By J. F. Baldwin

Every red-blooded teen has the same response when he reads his first William Shakespeare play. Looking blank, we scratch our heads and think, If Shakespeare's such a great writer, why doesn't he write stories that I can understand?

Great writing should result in great reading, right? So how come so many great writers are so hard to read?

Of course, we all know someone who doesn't think Shakespeare is difficult to comprehend. We know people who actually enjoy reading Shakespeare, or Dante, or interminable Russian novels filled with characters named Ivan Ivanovichendeisenoch. You may have decided that people who enjoy these things are just a little loony, but actually there's a better explanation: they have practiced.

Why can some people surf ten-foot waves or play complicated concertos on the piano? Practice. It's easy to assume that people who can perform fun, difficult feats were just born with special abilities—but that isn't completely true. Yes, great surfers must have healthy bodies and a well-developed sense of balance, but they don't have a magic "surf gene" that makes them great surfers. They begin with a knack, and develop that knack through plain, gritty hard work. Before surfing his first monster wave, the surfer must be abused by countless big waves. Sure, he looks like he's having fun now (he is!)—but he paid for it months and years beforehand in a way that was far from fun: getting pounded into the sand by runaway waves.

Believe it or not, this holds true for Shakespeare. Though a Shakespeare play won't whistle through your room and drive your head into the ocean floor, it also requires hard work. No one was born with the dreaded "Shakespeare gene" that allows them to love reading Shakespeare the first time they set eyes on his plays. Instead, anyone blessed with a healthy mind has the capacity to understand Shakespeare—but they must work to develop that tendency.

Shakespeare's not a foreign language, and it's not over your head. Reading Shakespeare is just another difficult feat like rock-climbing or drawing an accurate picture. You can't do it automatically—no one can—but if you're disciplined you can learn to do it well.

When you learn to do it well, something crazy will happen: you'll also learn to love reading Shakespeare. Just as the biggest rush for a surfer is surfing a monster wave well, the most enjoyable time for the reader is to read great literature well.

"Whatever you do," says the apostle Paul in Colossians 3:23, "work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men . . ." These are hard words. Work at doing dishes with all your heart? Work at reading Shakespeare with all your heart?

Absolutely. Work hard, and then expect exciting results. Our gracious God designed the universe in such a way that those who serve Him with all their might experience the most joy. In a world addicted to fun, only Christians find lasting happiness, by serving God with everything they've got.

So with Shakespeare, as with life—no pain, no gain. Though reading A Midsummer Night's Dream for the first time is a difficult task, reading it for the fourth time is an invigorating adventure.

A Midsummer Night's Dream is quite possibly Shakespeare's best comedy. Some of the relationships and coincidences seem far-fetched, of course—but we are expected to suspend disbelief when we enter a wood peopled by fairies. Nick Bottom, the good-natured weaver that takes himself and his play-within-a-play too seriously, serves an obvious warning that readers should take every aspect of the Dream (and of themselves) with a grain of salt.

Shakespeare creates three separate tensions that drive the play: (1) Will the two sets of young lovers (Demetrius and Helena, Lysander and Hermia) ever sort themselves out into the proper couples? (2) Will Oberon, King of the Fairies, wreak such a cruel vengeance on his queen, Titania, that he ruins their love? and (3) Are the common laborers, led by Nick Bottom, competent enough to produce a play that will be pleasing to the Duke and his betrothed on their wedding night?

Not surprisingly, each of these tensions are the result of foolish attitudes. The young lovers struggle at least in part because of Demetrius's fickle emotions, the fairy king and queen quarrel thanks to regal pride, and the laborers flounder due to their inexperience and bluster. We need not feel sorry for any of the characters in any of their predicaments—they have, by and large, inflicted their problems on themselves. For this reason, and because Shakespeare handles the comedy so adroitly, we can laugh at the characters even when their situations seem somewhat dark.

Helena, for example, would be a pitiful figure if the Dream was not a comedy. Once loved by Demetrius, she is spurned by him when he finds the opportunity to wed Hermia. Henceforth, she follows him around like a puppy—even into the enchanted forest—and drives him to distraction. At the height of his frustration, Demetrius is ready to abandon Helena to the wild beasts.

Poor Helena's desolation would break our hearts in other plays, but not here. As the four young lovers dash through the forest (the same forest where Oberon and Titania quibble and the laborers are practicing their play), their melodramatic declarations of love and their escapes and pursuits seem destined to lead to a happy ending. Lysander's observation that "the course of true love never did run smooth" does not stifle our suspicion that true love will ultimately win out.

This suspicion is strengthened by the meddlesome antics of King Oberon's fairy jester, Puck. As chief trouble-maker, Puck boasts the power to zoom around the world in mere moments, and he can create love potions. Though he seems bent on causing problems, his quick wit and his friendly spirit make it likely that he will ultimately unleash his powers to set things right.

Ironically, the Dream ends where real-life dreams begin: on a wedding day. Shakespeare's enchantment, cast by fairies and jesters and deep, dark woods, is reinforced by the enchantment felt by every bride and groom as they take their first steps on their greatest adventure. What bride doesn't feel like a queen on her wedding day? What groom isn't sure that he is the conquering hero? Readers rejoice that the spell cast by this story will continue long after the curtain comes down.

If you have already read A Midsummer Night's Dream and you didn't feel at all like rejoicing (or even chuckling), don't be discouraged. Reading Shakespeare, as you now know, is hard work. But there are at least two things you can do that will make your labor a little less taxing.

First, purchase or borrow a quality guide to Shakespeare's plays. Good guides will summarize the plot, provide character sketches, and explore some of the basic themes—all in modern English! Reading these guides before you read a Shakespeare play is a little like reading a map before you enter Los Angeles for the first time—it doesn't tell you everything you need to know, but at least you can find your way around.

In my opinion, the very best guide you can own is The Folger Guide to Shakespeare, edited by Louis B. Wright and Virginia A. LaMar. If you are unable to find this, you can rely on the Cliff Notes pamphlets, which deal singly with most Shakespeare plays. Though the tendency is to ignore Cliff Notes as "cheat sheets" for people too lazy to read their assignments, these booklets are generally quite helpful as introductions to difficult works—in fact, they usually provide traditional, conservative interpretations of literature.

After reading a guide's synopsis of a Shakespeare play, don't rush to your room and read the play. Instead, your next step should be to attend a traditional performance of the play (if this is not practical, consider renting a video of the performance instead). Seeing Shakespeare performed always helps you understand Shakespeare when you read, because the actors can communicate the subtle moods and meanings that the first-time reader might miss. Watching any Shakespeare performance just once will tremendously enhance your ability to understand his plays.

Taking these steps means investing your valuable time. It would be easier, in the short run, to just open your Shakespeare play and start reading. You might not understand much, but at least you'd get it over with! Unfortunately, God is not pleased when we live our lives this way. To please God, we must pursue knowledge and wisdom with zeal (Proverbs 4:7). This means walking the steeper, rockier mountain path—but it also means reaching the peak, and reaping rewards like the sweeping panorama and the bracing clarity of the sky.

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