>

I will stand by it until the day I die. R&J is a satire. Among the evidence is the fact that Romeo is gushing over this girl and then he sees Juliet. The first girl is never mentioned again. Just about every emotion in the play is absolutely fleeting. Imagine being willing to die over a 13 year old or 16 year old you have known for a couple days.
The op doth protest too much, methinks. >

I bite my thumb at OP >

No, sir. I do not bite my thumb at OP, sir, but I bite my thumb, sir. >

Do you quarrel sir? >

Quarrel, sir? No, sir! >

We can't stop here! This is bat country! >

We were somewhere around Verona, on the edge of Veneto, when the Capulets began to take hold. I remember saying something like “I feel a bit lightheaded, maybe you should quarrel”… >

And finally there I stood face to face with the elusive Shakespeare Hunter. >

No, it's Hunter S Thompson, the S is for Shakespeare. >

I keep your head low
Shakespeare may just sick his imaginary attorney on you >

You aren't entirely wrong, and you aren't entirely right.
Shakespeare isn't outdated. He's a lot of things, but outdated isn't one of them. Some of the stories that his plays centre around fit quite perfectly with both modern issues, and modern politics. Julius Caesar and Coriolanus can be used to talk about populist politics, for one example, and the metaphors work incredibly well.
Remaking Shakespeare is very important, and very useful, because it can transform an old tradition into a reflection of our modern culture.
HOWEVER...
The way that we have taught Shakespeare for years is one that completely disengages kids from him. Yes, the language is frustrating. He has lots of endless soliloquies, and our obsession over rhyming scheme and iambic pentameter basically puts students to sleep. 
We should not spend as much time on Shakespeare as we do, and when we do focus on him, Shakespeare should be remembered as an active participation subject. Fuck Romeo and Juliet, focus on something else. The Roman plays, The Tempest, all of those have some very weird and engaging lore that surround them that is worth picking up.
Shakespeare can be rude, funny, offensive, and wild. Speeches like the 'Brutus is an honourable man' speech from Julius Caesar or characters like Caliban are really, really interesting.
All that being said...
Do not teach Shakespeare in history, for God's sakes. You'll end up teaching that Shakespeare kept a strong historical account.
He didn't. >

This is hard to write without it sounding incredibly boastful, but England does have a very strong theatrical tradition. You're never far away from a local amateur dramatics society, Thespian society or theatre company. Shakespeare is pretty much their bread and butter, and I think that given the nature of Shakespeare's plays- if you can play those roles convincingly, you are most definitely a skilled actor. 
This is why I think English actors are overrepresented in Hollywood. Case in point is Patrick Stewart, who spent decades on the Shakespeare circuit, then got the role of Captain Picard in Star Trek are figuratively blew everyone out of the water with the quality of his performance. >


You're never far away from a local amateur dramatics society, 

Ah, you've met my family >

I will grant you that most curricula do a bad job of teaching Shakespeare, and I’m inclined to agree that Romeo and Juliet is a terrible starting point, and the comedies are even worse. It takes time to make sense of the language, and comedy is so language-dependent. Having to read footnotes that spell out the jokes does not make them funny. 
My vote for the best intro to Shakespeare is Macbeth. Ambition and greed and murder and tyrants? If you watched Game of Thrones, you can probably get behind Macbeth. >


If you watched Game of Thrones, you can probably get behind Macbeth.

If Game of Thrones were taught in English classes, it would suck. Reading the script, as is done with Shakespeare, would ruin an otherwise entertaining series.
Reading the script to anything is not as fun as watching it. >

You do know it's a book adaptation...? >

Part of the problem is that Shakespeare is meant to be watched, not read.  Reading Shakespeare is boring.  WATCHING Shakespeare, with actors who know their roles inside and out, is breathtaking. >


Reading Shakespeare is boring.

Reading Shakespeare yourself can be boring. Listening to your 14 year old classmates, some of whom could probably barely manage The Gruffalo, attempt to read out A Midsummer Night's Dream is EXCRUCIATING >

You say excruciating, I say hilarious. >

If you're not in the AP English class, and are just stuck in the regular dumb kid English class like I was (because i was too busy playing runescape to do homework so my grades sucked, not because I couldn't read lol), it stops being funny real quick. 
Some of those kids hadn't read a book their entire lives; it was the early era of sparknotes so they really didn't have to I guess. They were basically at the same reading level as they were in kindergarten. Kids these days are glued to social media sure but at least they're reading things on them, right? They're probably reading more, even if it is just Twitter or Instagram posts or whatever, then the kids in my day. Which is kinda funny I think. >

Yeah, I was in the same sort of boat. I read books like I was drinking water, but I also got a taste of video games, and my grades went into the toilet. So I was in Dumb Kid English with dudes that could barely read the name of the school, never mind a damn sonnet or paragraph. >

My best friend and I got banned from reading aloud for more than one paragraph a day, bc one day we got sick of the dumb kids taking ten times longer, so we tagged each other back and forth instead of tagging round the circle. We read for maybe 45 minutes straight, fast as we could, switching out every time a breath would cause a pause, no room for interruption.
A year later me and a different friend got in trouble at Little Caesars orientation, bc they made us group read the employee handbook, and we pulled the same system. I'm not gonna sit and wait for seven illiterates to read thirty pages of corporate drivel. >

I had a strange tangentially-related experience in 11th grade ... my US History teacher also ran the school's Evelyn Wood Speed Reading program (which I never took because I could read quickly just fine on my own). But in the middle of this year, we were also performing The Pirates of Penzance, and I got the role of Major-General Stanley, who famously has the "I am the very model of a modern major-general" patter song. 
I got very fast at those verses, because you sorta have to. She (the teacher) heard about this, and started having me read aloud in class more. Like, a lot more. As fast as I could. For several days, I did the reading for the entire class at warp speed. She was fascinated that I seemed to be able to process it and get it out my mouth faster than many kids could read to themselves. 
But then she was very disappointed when she learned that I also subvocalize (i.e., I "hear" the words inside my head) when I read. Apparently you can't do that if you really want to unlock speed reading. >

What's it called when your eyes are seeing the words but your brain is showing you a movie created based on those words? I don't really remember reading the words. I don't remember reading the words "red car" but I can go back and replay my personal movie in my head and tell you the car is/was red. >

I didn’t know there was a name for it beside “visual imagery”. I read like that as well and always assumed everyone else did until recently. My wife is perfectly literate, but doesn’t enjoy reading because it is just boring words to her. I read often because it creates that movie in my head that you mentioned. Like by the end of a book I’ll have facial features assigned for the primary characters. 
It’s cool while reading but it really makes movies based on novels hard to appreciate. >

I didn’t know this wasn’t like “standard” thinking. Neato. >

I agree with you in spirit, but not in detail.
Shakespeare is great and should absolutely continue to be a part of English classes. But the way that those lessons are taught is often crap and only makes kids disengage.
A similar thing happened to me in 6th grade with Edgar Allen Poe. By all rights, I should have loved Poe, but the way his works were taught in school caused me to dislike him for many years. This tells me that the problem has little to do with modernity or being outdated.
To take Romeo and Juliet for example. It is often framed as a love story, which does it a disservice because Shakespeare did not write it as one. The entire story is a dark joke. I feel like that detail alone would change a lot of readings/viewings. Context is as important as content. >

Its a tragedy. Not a comedy. As everyone dies. 
It is interesting though. Its absolutely not a romance >


everyone dies 

Fuck’s sake, did you not consider putting a spoiler tag on this? >

Seriously! It’s only been out for 400 some years! Need Spoiler tags! 🤣 >

I was just about to read it >

read the prologue to make sure its something you are interested in. >

Here's my poor person's gold 🥇 >

That dude "made" like legit manufactured a ton of modern english words. He would almost just smoosh them together to create word concoctions. The problem is that the modern curriculum isn't sufficiently explaining his importance in a linear way. I had to learn this years after reading it in HS. It's crazy. Google "what words did Shakespeare invent, and npr had an amazing podcast episode on it, I believe it was radiolabs "words". You won't regret it. >

You're right, but there's no way that would make highschool kids give a shit >

so? the majority high school kids don’t care about anything they’re learning. I taught high school science for 2 years and tried my hardest to make it interesting for everyone, but some kids would just rather eat soap than learn about its chemistry no matter how it’s presented. >

Definitely agree. After finishing university, I’d rather eat soap than have to experience organic and general chemistry again >

Dude O Chem was the BANE of my existence. We got through 3/4 of the quarter & the professor had to take an LOA due to losing his wife. The university said that certain majors could do a “pass/fail” option and “pass” the class as their grade stood at the moment, but I didn’t fall into that category, so I had to take it all over again. I fucking HATE O Chem to this day. 
Not the professors fault though- it was just a difficult subject to me & I really struggled with chemistry in general. >

Shakespeare could be good in a much later grade. 
Having to understand the old language AND the old customs AND analyse it for themes or whatever the teacher wants from the pupils is too much at once. >

As an English and theater nerd who loves Shakespeare, I think the biggest issue is the way we teach Shakespeare. We tend to just toss it at kids in early high school with no groundwork laid. For many kids its the first play they ever read. It's like teaching calculus before someone finished algebra. 
We should be teaching Shakespeare later, after some foundation in how you read a play, and spending enough time to actually teach it effectively. >

Shakespeare is so important to modern English that I think it's impossible not to focus on him in English class. Romeo and Juliette in my opinion is probably one of his worst plays and if I was a teacher I would never focus on it while Othello, Macbeth, and Hamlet are available, the holy trinity of plays.