Why Do High School Students Hate Unabridged Shakespeare?

Students are told that Shakespeare is our greatest writer and dramatist, yet his unabridged texts are too complex to be experienced without constantly referencing the often confusing notes of editors. Students are also told that Shakespeare's plays were written to be heard in the theatre, and yet find it excruciating to speak them aloud in class. They are not given the scripts film actors get, the cut ones that make sense; they are given scripts from 1623. Many students thus develop distaste for Shakespeare that impoverishes their adult lives.

There is a lie imbedded in the teaching of Shakespeare, a lie that causes the hate teenagers feel. The lie is that all of Shakespeare's writing was brilliant, important or even interesting. Some of it is just plain boring. Some of it is laundry lists of events and names, some tedious minutiae about country flowers or deeds. Some of it crosses my eyes. Why not rescue the really nutritious text by chipping away the incomprehensible and archaic that entombs it? Theatre people abridge Shakespeare all the time. Why must only teenagers suffer?

Young people hate unabridged Shakespeare because they can't use it as it was intended - out loud. They hate being unable to realize the expectations of their teachers. They want to act; they want to be brilliant. They hate the lie that unabridged Shakespearean plays are great theatre. Uncut, for them, they are not great theatre. They are a bore and a chore.

Today, Shakespearean plays are always cut for stage and film. Shakespeare Out Loud is abridged for teenagers. They can always explore the unabridged texts, the Folio originals if they like, after they have learned to love the Bard. They will learn this love by playing Shakespeare Out Loud first. They will never do it by silently reading unabridged texts. Until English teachers honestly face this fact, nothing will change: the hate and suffering will continue. The problem lies not with the teachers; the problem AND the solution lies with the texts/scripts the students are given.