Much Ado About Nothing, if you want something light/fun.
I vote Othello for tragedies.
leftwiththeriver on
Hamlet! I would also recommend an annotated version to start, which will have footnotes that define archaic words, provide social context, explain jokes, etc.
BoringTrouble11 on
Much Ado About Nothing or Midsummer Night’s Dream
Money-Knowledge-3248 on
I would recomend Macbeth to start with – it is accessible and probably ‘familiar’.
King Lear and The Tempest I would commend as well.
GlassGames on
See a good performance or watch a good movie. Read the play right before/right after. Shakespeare is meant to be read out loud and performed–that’s why a lot of people hate it when they’re forced to read it silently in school. Recommendations:
Midsummer Night’s Dream for comedies, the original teen romcom. Would have made a great 80’s John Hughes movie along the lines of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off or The Breakfast Club. Watch the 1999 movie with Stanley Tucci as Puck. After you’ve read it, if you like musicals, watch Were The World Mine.
King Lear for tragedies. Absolutely devastating especially if you’ve cared for a parent or older relative dealing with memory loss. Haven’t seen a good movie of this one, although there are some highly-rated versions out there, but go see it live it you get the chance.
Scary_Sarah on
Start with the comedies, but cut yourself some slack.
I studied English, and my English professors at University always reminded us that Shakespeare was meant to be watched not meant to be read. Don’t shy away from watching Shakespeare movies and plays.
Corfiz74 on
I also suggest reading Anthony Burgess’s Shakespeare biography – not super-scientific, but entertaining and informative, and makes you curious to read all the works!
jeffythunders on
Middle School
RangerActual on
Romeo and Juliet
Hamlet
Othello
Midsummer’s Night Dream
betterxtogether on
Much ado about nothing
Romeo and Juliet
Hamlet
night__mother on
Midsummer. It’s one of his easiest to read if you’re a beginner, and it’s hilarious!
PrincessMurderMitten on
If you can get a good translation that preserves the blank verse format and is written in play form, and read it out loud. I enjoy it much more if I can hear it, even if I’m reading to myself.
Also before watching a movie or a play, I always either read the play or a synopsis, so when I’m watching it I know what’s going on and I can concentrate on the beauty of the language.
mybuttonsbutton on
I vote you try Romeo & Juliet given the fact that unless you’ve somehow managed to avoid all the regurgitations of it over the past 500 years, you know the shape of the story inherently, and you can enjoy the poetry knowing the general moves of the story– and there are so many wonderful versions you can watch after the read. Baz Luhrmann’s, West Side Story, etc and compare/contrast.
Too_Too_Solid_Flesh on
In general, his early works are more immediately accessible than his later ones. Not only did he turn to tragedy and romance (in the sense of stories with improbable adventures, divine interventions, etc.) in his later years, whereas in his earlier years he was more likely to write comedy or history, but his language is also more direct. There are some passages in the later plays where even the scholarly annotators have to confess themselves defeated as to what Shakespeare could have meant.
That said, with the more complex language also comes more complex and sustained poetic imagery, so if you appreciate the poetic qualities language can have—as you likely do if you read a lot of classic literature—then you should read the later works eventually, especially the tragedies like *Othello*, *King Lear*, *Macbeth*, *Antony and Cleopatra*, and I would even say *Coriolanus* (though it does have a singularly dislikeable protagonist) and the very influential late romance *The Tempest.*
But I’d still start with the early-to-middle period comedies as being the easiest and most immediately appealing of his works. *Twelfth Night* is my personal favorite, and I also enjoy *As You Like It*, *Much Ado About Nothing*, and *A Midsummer Night’s Dream*. *Love’s Labour’s Lost* is also a favorite of mine, but I wouldn’t recommend reading it until you get some other Shakespeare under your belt first because it’s a feast of language and satire on contemporary literary movements like Euphuism that you might not appreciate until you’ve gotten a lot of Shakespeare’s works under your belt first.
I don’t know how you intend to read the works, but I like the Folger Shakespeare Library editions. They’re cheap ($6 per book new, and you might be able to get even more attractive editions if you buy used) and they strike the right balance between too few and too many notes, IMO. If you want to read an edition with few or no notes, however, you can use *A Shakespeare Glossary* by C. T. Onions, which is now in the public domain and available [via Internet Archive](https://archive.org/details/shakespearegloss00oniouoft/mode/2up), or you could buy *Shakespeare’s Words: A Glossary & Language Companion* by David Crystal and Ben Crystal. I’ve used the latter book myself to twice read the First Folio—the collected edition of Shakespeare’s works published in 1623, which I own in a facsimile edition—and I can testify to how good it is.
I also like *William Shakespeare: Complete Works* edited by Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen (The Modern Library) for the excellence of its notes and introductory material. The only drawbacks to it are that it’s based on the First Folio, so they made the decision to distinguish the non-Folio text by printing it in smaller type (though this wouldn’t be an issue if you got the e-book) and all the quarto-only variant readings are confined to an appendix that follows the play.
ravens_path on
You will need to read a play or sonnets that have footnotes that explain the Shakespeare English. My opinion, it’s worth it.
Old-Lead-2532 on
Hamlet – Angry young man seeks revenge for the cuckolded ghost of his dead father. “To be or….”
Richard III – A fight for the crown by all means necessary. “Now is the winter of our discontent…”
16 Comments
Much Ado About Nothing, if you want something light/fun.
I vote Othello for tragedies.
Hamlet! I would also recommend an annotated version to start, which will have footnotes that define archaic words, provide social context, explain jokes, etc.
Much Ado About Nothing or Midsummer Night’s Dream
I would recomend Macbeth to start with – it is accessible and probably ‘familiar’.
King Lear and The Tempest I would commend as well.
See a good performance or watch a good movie. Read the play right before/right after. Shakespeare is meant to be read out loud and performed–that’s why a lot of people hate it when they’re forced to read it silently in school. Recommendations:
Midsummer Night’s Dream for comedies, the original teen romcom. Would have made a great 80’s John Hughes movie along the lines of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off or The Breakfast Club. Watch the 1999 movie with Stanley Tucci as Puck. After you’ve read it, if you like musicals, watch Were The World Mine.
King Lear for tragedies. Absolutely devastating especially if you’ve cared for a parent or older relative dealing with memory loss. Haven’t seen a good movie of this one, although there are some highly-rated versions out there, but go see it live it you get the chance.
Start with the comedies, but cut yourself some slack.
I studied English, and my English professors at University always reminded us that Shakespeare was meant to be watched not meant to be read. Don’t shy away from watching Shakespeare movies and plays.
I also suggest reading Anthony Burgess’s Shakespeare biography – not super-scientific, but entertaining and informative, and makes you curious to read all the works!
Middle School
Romeo and Juliet
Hamlet
Othello
Midsummer’s Night Dream
Much ado about nothing
Romeo and Juliet
Hamlet
Midsummer. It’s one of his easiest to read if you’re a beginner, and it’s hilarious!
If you can get a good translation that preserves the blank verse format and is written in play form, and read it out loud. I enjoy it much more if I can hear it, even if I’m reading to myself.
Also before watching a movie or a play, I always either read the play or a synopsis, so when I’m watching it I know what’s going on and I can concentrate on the beauty of the language.
I vote you try Romeo & Juliet given the fact that unless you’ve somehow managed to avoid all the regurgitations of it over the past 500 years, you know the shape of the story inherently, and you can enjoy the poetry knowing the general moves of the story– and there are so many wonderful versions you can watch after the read. Baz Luhrmann’s, West Side Story, etc and compare/contrast.
In general, his early works are more immediately accessible than his later ones. Not only did he turn to tragedy and romance (in the sense of stories with improbable adventures, divine interventions, etc.) in his later years, whereas in his earlier years he was more likely to write comedy or history, but his language is also more direct. There are some passages in the later plays where even the scholarly annotators have to confess themselves defeated as to what Shakespeare could have meant.
That said, with the more complex language also comes more complex and sustained poetic imagery, so if you appreciate the poetic qualities language can have—as you likely do if you read a lot of classic literature—then you should read the later works eventually, especially the tragedies like *Othello*, *King Lear*, *Macbeth*, *Antony and Cleopatra*, and I would even say *Coriolanus* (though it does have a singularly dislikeable protagonist) and the very influential late romance *The Tempest.*
But I’d still start with the early-to-middle period comedies as being the easiest and most immediately appealing of his works. *Twelfth Night* is my personal favorite, and I also enjoy *As You Like It*, *Much Ado About Nothing*, and *A Midsummer Night’s Dream*. *Love’s Labour’s Lost* is also a favorite of mine, but I wouldn’t recommend reading it until you get some other Shakespeare under your belt first because it’s a feast of language and satire on contemporary literary movements like Euphuism that you might not appreciate until you’ve gotten a lot of Shakespeare’s works under your belt first.
I don’t know how you intend to read the works, but I like the Folger Shakespeare Library editions. They’re cheap ($6 per book new, and you might be able to get even more attractive editions if you buy used) and they strike the right balance between too few and too many notes, IMO. If you want to read an edition with few or no notes, however, you can use *A Shakespeare Glossary* by C. T. Onions, which is now in the public domain and available [via Internet Archive](https://archive.org/details/shakespearegloss00oniouoft/mode/2up), or you could buy *Shakespeare’s Words: A Glossary & Language Companion* by David Crystal and Ben Crystal. I’ve used the latter book myself to twice read the First Folio—the collected edition of Shakespeare’s works published in 1623, which I own in a facsimile edition—and I can testify to how good it is.
I also like *William Shakespeare: Complete Works* edited by Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen (The Modern Library) for the excellence of its notes and introductory material. The only drawbacks to it are that it’s based on the First Folio, so they made the decision to distinguish the non-Folio text by printing it in smaller type (though this wouldn’t be an issue if you got the e-book) and all the quarto-only variant readings are confined to an appendix that follows the play.
You will need to read a play or sonnets that have footnotes that explain the Shakespeare English. My opinion, it’s worth it.
Hamlet – Angry young man seeks revenge for the cuckolded ghost of his dead father. “To be or….”
Richard III – A fight for the crown by all means necessary. “Now is the winter of our discontent…”