Shakespeare is a challenge to our modern ears, no doubt about it. Even the most knowledgeable experts halter a line or two of a performance before they settle in to the poetry. In my experience, it takes me about a few minutes before the language on stage sounds completely natural and non-foreign.

I’ve been teaching Shakespeare to eighth graders of various academic levels for the past week: an enlightening, frustrating, ultimately rewarding experience. We’re reading an abridged version of Much Ado About Nothing. It is, in fact, part of the required eighth grade curriculum here in Greenville County, and I’m thrilled that those who designed the curriculum had the wisdom of chosing a comedy rather than, say, Julius Caesar. (A perfectly fine play in its own rights, it’s an absolute bore to teenagers.) Much Ado has all the elements adolescents can relate to: unrequited love; jealousy; the twittery, jittery joy of new love.

Yet it’s still been difficult enough for them that it’s been, at times, a chore. And so to remedy that, I changed my unit plan and decided to show the Branaugh Much Ado concurrently with our own reading. We’ve completed the first two acts in class; we watched the first two acts today.

What a joy to watch the kids watch Shakespeare and enjoy it. What was most rewarding for me was to hear them laugh at lines that had been omitted from our abridged version. “They’re really getting it,” I almost said aloud.