How to read Shakespeare?

Get an annotated edition - if you like reading on your PC, nfs.sparknotes.com is nice

For ebooks/paperbooks I love the Royal Shakespeare Company editions, they're heavily annotated

Just start with the more well known plays. I mean I read Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, MacBeth and Julius Caesar in high school and I got the gist of it. They're not THAT hard if you're patient and careful in your reading.

I liked Hamlet best.

>>8471394
My high school english teacher always said Shakespeare was meant to be heard, not to be read. Get some audiobooks or see if you can find a theatre adaption on youtube. Actually hearing/seeing the play can make things a lot easier.

>>8471444
>My high school english teacher always said Shakespeare was meant to be heard, not to be read.

That's the case for all poetry.

OP, get an Arden (or Oxford) edition of one of his plays. Macbeth and R&J are good places to start.

Is it normal if shakespeare is terribly boring in french? Is it the translation or is he just shit? I've read other translations before and there were no problem at all.

>>8471394
Is English your mother tongue or not?

>>8472561
François-Victor Hugo is the best translation, even with its flaws. And it's not boring.

You're losing a third of the original beauty in French, but the remaining two thirds are solid and already better than most writers.

>>8472561
I've only read Hamlet and Henry IV in English but they both were pretty fucking funny

>>8472574
wtf i've read hamlet and there's absolutely nothing funny about it

Watch a couple stagings of his plays on YouTube until you can acclimate to the language a little bit.

Then you're ready to tackle the Big Four -- King Lear, Othello, Hamlet and Macbeth. Skip the comedies.