Reading Shakespeare without footnotes is difficult even for native speakers. Some of the plays work well enough (although there will always be some passages that will be confusing), but the sonnets are mostly incomprehensible.
To be honest, I had the opposite problem. Dialogue with no captions or directions or context? How am I supposed to guess how the characters feel?
And, honestly, moden actors take playing Shakespeare so damn seriously, they could be saying “ba ba ba ba” and still sound emotionally three-dimensional and intense and layered and stuff. I keep finding that the text often doesn’t measure up to the skill invested in portraying it.
Reading Shakespeare without footnotes is difficult even for native speakers. Some of the plays work well enough (although there will always be some passages that will be confusing), but the sonnets are mostly incomprehensible.
To be honest, I had the opposite problem. Dialogue with no captions or directions or context? How am I supposed to guess how the characters feel?
And, honestly, moden actors take playing Shakespeare so damn seriously, they could be saying “ba ba ba ba” and still sound emotionally three-dimensional and intense and layered and stuff. I keep finding that the text often doesn’t measure up to the skill invested in portraying it.
I didn’t find the sonnets too confusing, and I’m not even a native English speaker.