Can’t seem to understand how to read Shakespeare for HSC English? Keep having to look up definitions and interpretations?
I’ve been an English tutor at Art of Smart for over 2 years, finished Year 12 with a Band 6 in English Advanced and even studied Shakespeare myself! So best believe I can guide you through getting your head around Shakespearean English.
This guide will run you through…
- Why we still study Shakespeare,
- how to gain a deep understanding of your text,
- the different genres Shakespeare wrote in and what each one means,
- how to read Shakespeare so you can effectively annotate your text,
- and key things to know about his context!
Ready to get started? Let’s go!
Why should we study Shakespeare?
Step 1: Watch an Adaptation
Step 2: Find the Genre
Step 3: Read and Annotate the Play
Step 4: Write TEE Tables
Step 5: Research Context
Step 6: Read other Analyses
Step 7: A Final Piece of Advice
😏 Why should we study Shakespeare?
The reason Shakespeare continues to be studied is because his work explores timeless, universal human experiences that are still relevant to us today. He is an expert at writing in multiple genres, and uses his characters to delve into important themes and the complexities of human emotions.
Even though you may have to take time in learning how to read Shakespeare and understand Shakespearean English, it teaches us the power of language and how it can be used to convey crucial messages.
In studying and analysing Shakespeare, students develop their critical thinking skills through decoding what his writing means, and the influences his works have had in modern society.
Step 1: Watch an Adaptation
Even though I adored English, and chose to pursue it in my tertiary education, I didn’t really enjoy Shakespeare until I was assigned Hamlet in my first year of university.
What changed was that this time, I had a film adaptation assigned alongside it, and strategised my studies so I would have enough time to enjoy it.
I was irritated that I didn’t get it, and watched and read it until I did, and that’s what led me to read Shakespeare in my own time for my own enjoyment.
Once I had the general order of events down, the qualities of the words themselves were much easier to appreciate.
Watching adaptations is essential to really getting Shakespeare, for a few reasons:
Firstly, you’re watching somebody else’s interpretation of your prescribed text, which gives you an insight into how characters and themes might be perceived.
Secondly, adaptations you a visual reference to the events of the play. It can get hard to keep track of a cast of Shakespeare characters with unfamiliar names and little to work from in the way of physical description.
Below is a table of my recommended Shakespeare interpretations, with a trailer linked in the title.
Here, I’ve put together a list of the Shakespeare adaptations I would recommend for all of his plays which are in the senior years’ syllabi.
| Play | Adaptation |
|---|---|
| A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream | A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream (1999) |
| King Henry IV, Part 1 | The Hollow Crown: Episode One |
| King Richard III | The Hollow Crown, The Wars of the Roses: Episode Three |
| Hamlet | Hamlet (2009) |
| The Merchant of Venice | The Merchant of Venice (2004) |
| The Tempest | The Tempest (2009) |
Step 2: Find the Genre
One of the many reasons Shakespeare continues to be studied is because of his mastery in writing multiple genres.
In The First Folio (1623), the first collection of Shakespeare’s plays published roughly seven years following his death, his works are categorised under three genres; Comedy, Tragedy and History.
Here’s a quick rundown of these genres and which plays fall under each category.
😂 Comedy
In regards to Shakespeare’s plays, the genre of comedy prompts audiences to think deeply about the characters and their relationships with each other.
Often characterised by their chaotic storylines and surprising plot twists, these types of dramas are more playful and humorous. Nonetheless, they thoroughly explore complex themes such as love, identity and morality.
Examples of Shakespeare’s comedies include:
- Much Ado About Nothing
- As You Like It
- The Merchant of Venice
- The Taming of the Shrew
- Twelfth Night
- The Tempest
😢 Tragedy
Shakespeare’s tragedies follow a series of events that ultimately lead to the fatal demise of a major character. This happens due to either their own flaws, or being betrayed and sabotaged by others.
Shakespeare’s tragedy dramas include:
- Othello
- Romeo and Juliet
- Hamlet
- The Tragedy of Macbeth
- Antony and Cleopatra
- King Lear
🏰 History
Even though Shakespeare’s historical dramas were based around real people and periods in history, they weren’t historically accurate.
What I mean by this is that whilst the social constructs and beliefs featured in his plays were representative of the past, the events that unfold are fictional and serve as commentaries on issues within society during these times.
Within this genre he only wrote about English Monarchs, of whom the plays are named after.
Some of Shakespeare’s historical dramas include:
- King John
- Richard II
- Henry IV
- Richard III
♥️ Romance
Recent scholars have begun using the theme of ‘romance’ to describe the Shakespearean plays that don’t quite fall within any of these genres. Romances are where he combines tragic and comedic elements, so they aren’t what you would consider a typical romance text to be.
His romances all have whimsical and magical qualities, depicting the transformation of relationships and unfamiliar places.
There are only a few Shakespearean plays that count as romance, which are:
- The Tempest
- The Winter’s Tale
- Cymbaline
- Pericles
Step 3: Read and Annotate the Play
Okay, so now you should have a basic understanding of the play. The next step is to grab your pens (or your e-reader, whatever) and read the thing!
If you’re not already annotating your HSC texts, now is the time to start, as it’s a very useful skill to separate parts of the text and start thinking about what matters for your assessment.
Here’s a few steps to take in properly examining the text:
- Read the footnotes: These are at the bottom of each page and can either provide context or definitions so that you can better understand the plot.
- Pay attention to line breaks and rhythm
- Read aloud and think like a director (visualise the action on stage)
- Translate unfamiliar words
In order to learn how to read Shakespeare, you’re gonna have to do quite a bit of translating.
But don’t fear! We’ve created an alphabetical list of 100 Shakespearean words and their meanings for your reference!
When it comes to annotating, in my Kindle app I use three different highlight colours for Shakespeare plays:
- Yellow is for quotes I think will be useful for my work.
- Red is for things I don’t get (so I can research later without breaking my reading flow).
- Orange is for quotes that I like but don’t feel like they’ll be relevant to whatever topic I’m writing about.
I also make notes, particularly in the parts I’ve labelled yellow. Sometimes they’re almost clear enough to copy and paste into whatever essay I’m writing, but most of the time they’re next to incoherent.
Both, however, let me see my own knowledge developing, see what I found the most important lines to be, and keep my ideas down so that I can build on them later. I also feel like this lets me engage with the text, because I’m developing something as I go!
If you’re lucky, you have a version of the text which comes with its own annotations. This can mean little explanations of what’s going on, and/or definitions, which are very useful to have at hand.
However, if you are given a particular quote in your text, you’re not going to have this luxury, so it’s vital to get used to the rhythms and structures of Shakespeare’s writing.
Step 4: Write TEE Tables
Now that you’ve underlined, highlighted, bracketed, or however you mark your text as you’re reading, it’s time to look at the parts you’ve checked and start putting them in Technique, Example, Effect Tables.
If you’re not entirely confident of the angle you’re going to take on the play, it could be useful to start by organising your key quotes in terms of what theme they’re about.
Alternatively, you could write TEE tables based on characters, with your ‘explanation’ column explaining what is being revealed about the character and their perspective on the issues of the play.
However, the further you are in your study, the more you want to be thinking about what kind of arguments you will make.
Here’s an example of a table I could use to collect evidence to discuss the experience of deep friendship within The Merchant of Venice:
| Technique | Example | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Accumulation | My purse, my person, my extremest means, Lie all unlock'd to your occasions. | Here, the intensity of Antonio’s loyalty to Bassanio is emphasised through the accumulation. |
| Metaphor | Whose souls do bear an equal yoke of love… | Portia’s poetic description of Antonio and Bassanio’s friendship for one another demonstrates their love is both equal in both of them and that it is also a burden. |
| Superlative | "The dearest friend to me, the kindest man, The best-condition'd and unwearied spirit.” | Bassanio’s explanation of Antonio’s qualitys repeatedly uses superlative language to demonstrate the extent of his affection for his friend. |
Step 5: Research Context
There’s a few ways to research Shakespeare’s plays, but a good first stop is YouTube.
There are plenty of videos online, both professional and amateur, detailed and surface-level, of Shakespeare analysis, often with valuable insights and handy visual cues.
I can recommend John Green’s CrashCourse series, for instance — his Hamlet analysis videos are great, for example.
Other great channels to check out are Authentic English, which does summaries alongside analysis, and Dr. Aidan, who does break-downs of the most important sections of the plays.
There’s also lots of academic literature written about Shakespeare. Now, academic criticism gets a bit of a bad rap, but it’s well worth pushing through the dense language.
Most of my students get nervous as soon as I mention it, but most, if not all, are grateful once they’ve read an article on their Shakespeare play that I’ve tracked down.
Plus, because you’re essentially reading somebody else’s analysis of the text you have to analyse, it’s a great tool to help you form the kind of original arguments that Band 6 students write! Check out JSTOR to get started.
Step 6: Read other Analyses
One of the best ways to get inspiration for your own essay responses is to read other peoples’!
Living in this digital era we have unlimited resources at our fingertips. So jump online and find out what others’ are saying about Shakespeare, the textual examples they use, and how they dissect them.
Seeing how they interpret the text, including each character’s purpose, the themes explored, and how they structure their response can be super helpful in jumpstarting your own writing.
Step 7: Be Patient with Yourself!
Still feeling lost trying to understand history’s greatest playwright? The thing you have to remember about analysing Shakespeare is that there’s nobody who approaches a Shakespeare play for the first time and finds it easy.
If you pick up Richard III and find you cannot understand anything that he’s going, it doesn’t mean you’re dumb or illiterate.
Rather, you’re reading a text which was created a little under 300 years ago, for an audience who is completely different from you, in a form which it wasn’t intended to be consumed in.
Grappling with difficult texts is a process, which means that you have to work towards understanding, rather than try and get it all perfectly on your first read of it. It takes time, and the challenge will ultimately sharpen your skills as a writer.
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Luka Russell is an English tutor at Art of Smart Education, and graduated from UTS in 2023 with a Bachelor of Communication, majoring in Journalism. Aside from educational content, she is passionate about health and beauty journalism, having written various articles on female health topics. She also loves to draw in her spare time.
Cameron Croese completed his HSC in 2013, earning first place in his cohort in Advanced English, Extension English 1, and Extension English 2. Privately tutoring throughout his university career as an English and Education student, he enjoys helping his students at Art of Smart understand, write well on, and enjoy their texts, as well as assisting with other aspects of school life. He is a contributing editor to his student magazine, in which he has had reviews, feature articles, and short stories published.
