Good point. The only line that ever worked on me was a guy who was able to woo me with Sonnet 116 (The “Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds,” one) and was then able to follow it up with Sonnet 29 (“When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes…”) both from memory. He got my *actual *phone number.
And if he had had IP’s accent, he would have gotten even more that night! 
It might be worthwhile to rent “Looking for Richard,” a documentary with Al Pacino talking about Shakespeare. Really enjoyable, and they talk about some of the problems of bringing Shakespeare to life…This movie totally changed my opinion of Al Pacino, who is great in it.
As someone who plans to do a master’s degree in Shakespeare, I offer three things:
a) My favourite lines of all time–Titus Andronicus, act IV, scene 2, lines 73-76. Aaron the Moor has just been presented with his newborn son, and the mother’s two grownup sons are confronting him.
b) Shakespeare for Dummies, by John Doyle and Ray Lischner, has a very silly title and is actually incredibly helpful–for understanding the language, the plots, Shakespeare’s world, and pointing in the direction of some great adaptations.
c) I loathed every minute of the 18th-century novel course I had to take, and that does not make me a bad person. If Shakespeare’s not your thing, don’t stress it.
What a wonderful book. I kept seeing it referred to in book reviews, and when I finally read it, it was far better than my expectations. As a character said in the movie, a post modern novel before there was a modern to be post from. Also the first instance of “This page left intentionally blank” in English.
One of my life goals was to read all of Shakespeare. In my first stab I started in chronological order, and bogged down in Henry VI Part II. (Not all of Shakespeare is stellar.) I tried a different order the second time. It is like learning another language - by a few plays in, I was reading fluently, and dreaming in blank verse.
I’d suggest to the OP to start with Midsummer Night’s Dream (which I did in junior high) and not with Hamlet or Macbeth. Shorter, funnier, simpler. If you care about the words, get something like Folgers which explains the odd words, but that isn’t very important on the first reading.
(I did finish everything, right through Henry VIII).
Whilst I appreciate the complement it is this kind of view that really riles me. I don’t HAVE to like Shakespeare, it’s not a failing on my part to not do so. I love classical and baroque music, not everyone does. Should they “keep at it”? I can’t stand Dickens but I really love Austen, should I keep plugging away at Dickens even though it bores me to tears?
Er, yeah… There’s a fairly important fact that you don’t seem to know about me.
As I said I loved TA (or the film adaptation of it) and part of the reason was humour such as that, my friend and I (and she is no Shakespeare lover either) were rolling in the aisles at some of the stuff happening in that film.
Just to reiterate, it’s not that I haven’t been exposed to Shakespeare. I’ve either read (in an academic context) or seen many of the productions that people are suggesting I start with. Sure, I enjoyed seeing Midsummer live whilst not really enjoying it in text form. I quite enjoyed Anthony and Cleopatra but it took three months of studying it at A level to be clear what was happening in it and to really be able to enjoy a lot of the subtlety. I really enjoyed the McKellan version of Richard III mentioned upthread, but I think that was partly because it was so successfully translated into a modern setting where what was happening made sense. Ditto on Baz Lurman’s Romeo and Juliet.
Again, it’s not because I’m ignorant of history or Shakespeare academically that I don’t “understand” him. Of course I can sit and read the plays and figure out what’s going on and what is being said but the ratio of effort:enjoyment is skewed heavily in the wrong direction. Whilst I agree that some higher pleasures involve effort there is a point at which you have to say this isn’t for me and stop. It’s one of the great things about being an adult that I can do that, too.
Or you could just say “screw it” and watch him get physically harmed:
(FWIW I like Shakespeare, but that video is way to good for me to not like)
I may very well steal this quote and post it in my classroom!! 
IP–I think most people here just want to share their enjoyment of the Bard. It’s ok if it’s not your thing. I don’t much like ballet and most operas leave me cold. I’m not an uneducated yokel who just can’t appreciate finer things–I just am not all that interested in either art form.
Frankly, I find Shakespeare more fun to quote (not that I do it regularly) and I enjoy reading characters in novels who quote him.
I can’t stand Dickens, either, except for* Christmas Carol* (due to sentiment) and A Tale of Two Cities. The rest I’ll never read again. Yay!(but I wouldn’t mind watching “Oliver!” again…)
Sorry IP - you make a solid case for your informed dislike. I share your affection for Austen and distaste for Dickens and will add that while I am capable of slogging through Joyce’s Ulysses and respect the brilliance of its realized ambition, it ain’t for me.
There is something to be said for drawing your own conclusions - I happen to think Renoir is nowhere near the same league as most of his Impressionist peers - but whereas I used to state “Renoir sucks” I now will offer that his work is not to my taste and leave it at that.
…And good luck with impressing the ladies - I know its a priority of yours
What’s sad is that too many English teachers out there really do teach it this way. "Now class, let’s identify the theme . . . "
You’re right, and I think I possibly overstated my OP somewhat - of course Shakespeare isn’t objectively bad, he’s just subjectively bad to me. I posted my OP in annoyance as I’d just watched (or more accurately, given up on watching) the umpteenth adaptation of one of his plays and I had an “enough is enough” moment.
elanoribgy - you’re also right of course, and thanks to everyone for the advice. I’m willing to try a bit more before finally swearing off Shakespeare for good, I’ve got the Branagh version of Much Ado in my film queue and intend to go and see a play at the Globe when a friend of mine comes to visit because that’s as close as you can get to experiencing it as it was originally intended. Who knows, maybe I’ll change my mind. Until then I’ll stick to rewatching Titus on DVD and drooling at the man-candy. 
You also might just walk away from it for five or ten years. At different stages of our life different things resonate with us. I am not saying you need to grow up or mature—nothing is more annoying than “you’ll get it when you are older” --but there is a season for everything in our lives. Hell, I go through long phases when I can’t even read fiction, and others where it fills my life. Don’t burn yourself out on it if it’s just a non-starter right now. It’ll be there later.
Sounds like your likening reading Shakespeare to getting a flu shot.
You don’t like musicals?
I don’t actually, but that wasn’t what I was referring to.
At the risk of adding to the pile, I’ll add another level that might be easier to appreciate Shakespeare on. As others have said; no worries if you still don’t dig The Bard after this thread. I’m not partial to Chaucer, m’self. But there’s another place where Shakespeare’s genius lies.
One thing I think gets overlooked a lot in “OMG SHAXSPEAR” conversations is how much he gives his actors to work with. He was a fantastic wordsmith, sure, but that’s not very meaningful to somebody sitting in the audience who can’t even figure out what the fucking Guard is talking about, let alone why his observations about wine are ever so witty. Likewise, he was really funny and relevant to his time, but that’s not a whole lot of help to people like us who aren’t quite as up-to-date on Elizabethan slang.
The best chance of enjoying Shakespeare (and, from your posts, the way that you seem to have enjoyed him when you have) is to see him well-performed. Hopkins in Titus, or McKellan in Richard III, or Branaugh in most everything; these are performances that are compelling, and exciting to watch, and enjoyable on a very basic, visceral level. What I think gets lost, though, is the fact that every single emotional choice made by those actors, no matter how inspired, was given to them by Shakespeare.
Which is hard to believe, since it’s really just a column of words on the page and minimal stage directions. But Shakespeare delivered so much emotion, gravitas, rhythm, cadance and whatever else through his simple word choice that you could spend days and days analyzing it and still not catch all the little details.
For example, in the beginning of Richard II, two courtly guys fight a duel and the King, deciding that it would just break his heart to see them kill each other, opts to exile them both instead. One guy gets banished for a few years but the other, Mowbray, gets banished for life. This causes him to make a gorgeous, angry speech about how awful exile from England will be, since no other country speaks English, and he doesn’t know any other language. He states:
Forget about the metaphors, and the poetry, and the keen observation about why something like this would be so terrifying. Forget all of it, and just focus on the sounds of the words. Shakespeare uses them to dictate the exact build of emotion and pathos that Mowbray is going through. Try saying it out loud, and it might be more apparent. I’ve bolded a couple lines that illustrate it the best.
In the first bolded lines, Mowbray makes a lovely and sad image: “Within my mouth you have enjailed my tongue,” but then what does Shakespeare do? Kick it up a notch, and write a follow-up line chock-full of consonants (which require the tongue): “Doubly portcullised with my teeth and lips.” Having mentioned that his tongue is jailed, Mowbray then demonstrates how important his tongue is, almost spitting consonants with it. He doesn’t just settle for a metaphor; he uses those consonants to further make his point (or give that tongue some final exercise before it’s enjailed forever).
And, after some more lovely building, he ends on the “speechless death” lines, which start with some more consonants (because consonants are the most pissed-off sounds you can make), but then he reverses things for his final line, about “breathing native breath.” There are barely any hard sounds in that entire sentence, as though in mimicry of, you guessed it, breathing. Again, Mowbray’s illustrating exactly what he stands to lose upon exile. He’s also, at the end of his tirade, deflating under the weight of what’s in store for him.
The overall impression if you read it out loud should be an alternation between the really hard, angry sounds, and the soft, weak, breathy ones. For an actor, that means that Mowbray is alternating between being FURIOUS that his King could treat him so horribly, and being abjectly, sadly terrified at grim future that awaits. But if an actor’s doing it right, he won’t overplay any of that, so the speech will come across as smooth and sad and desperate but also entirely believable and devastating.
And the kicker? You never see Mowbray again. Like, that’s it. Half a scene and he’s out of the play, and Shakespeare still took the time to craft a speech so exactly that it perfectly mimics the emotional arc the actor needs to ride to make it fully understandable. If he took so much time on what’s arguably a bit character in the play, imagine how much crafting he did for the heavy-hitters.
So, that’s another (albeit very long-winded) point in Shakespeare’s favor, for me. A lot of actors fight him, and only give the thees and thous and the big phony actor voices, but if, like all the great performers of Shakespeare do, you just sit back and ride the words and the sounds that he’s giving you, he’ll make you look like a genius, and deliver the performance of a lifetime when you are, in a lot of ways, on autopilot.
Overstated a bit, of course, but if we don’t have hyperbole, what do we have?
No, I’m likening understanding Shakespeare to learning a second language. Immersion learning is, for most people, a better way to develop language fluency than anxiously pouring over a list of vocabulary words and trying to pound them into your head with a one to one translation. Our brains are wired to understand language - any language, but they work best at that task if it’s an unconscious process developed by being surrounded by that language.
Some of this may stem from seeing R & J with, well, grown-up actors playing what are essentially love-sick emo (young) teenagers, who can’t see an alternate solution to their dilemma. It’s hard to see how or why mature adults would act that way (yes, they’d have to be dim-witted or featuring in a farce), but 14 year-olds?
Maybe you can catch American Idol. Or perhaps “Vacuous Blonde Bimbos being Stupid on Reality Shows” is on too. Perhaps a rerun of “D-list Celebrities clinging to relevancy” is on cable?
Jeez, dude, can’t you ever make up your mind about something?