I am an enormous fan of Shakespeare. I have written a one-man show, basically walking through Shakespeare's life by stringing many passages from many plays, sonnets and poems. It's over 1 1/2 hours of memorization.
Shakespeare can be difficult, yes, but you would be surprised how little you really have to learn about his use of language until you begin to appreciate it. Blank verse (called iambic pentameter, a dreadful phrase) allows for ways to really highlight what the actor really means when speaking as one of Shakespeare's characters. Because blank verse offers a strong metric pattern of 10 beats, alternating soft-strong, soft-strong....so --- de DUM de DUM de DUM de DUM de DUM, it is possible to overlay the natural stresses of English to bring special meaning to the words when they are spoken. Here's an example from Julius Caesar.
Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Try reading the first line out loud, the way you would naturally say it --
Cow-ards
die ma-ny
times be-
fore their
deaths.
Now try saying it with the stress given by blank verse -- Cow-
ards die
ma-ny
times be-
fore their
deaths. See how the first syllable of cowards is weakened? See how the whole cadence is thrown off?
Now try the second line: The
Val-iant
ne-ver
taste of
death but
once. You would say this the same way whether in blank verse or not, but the effect is to strengthen valiant taste death once. It leaves a stronger impression because the metre of blank verse supports the thought spoken.
And sometimes, this just for fun, when you learn a little about the language of his day, you can spot some pretty raunchy stuff. Here's a sonnet:
Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy Will,
And Will to boot, and Will in overplus;
More than enough am I that vex thee still,
To thy sweet will making addition thus.
Wilt thou, whose will is large and spacious,
Not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine?
Shall will in others seem right gracious,
And in my will no fair acceptance shine?
The sea, all water, yet receives rain still,
And in abundance addeth to his store;
So thou being rich in Will add to thy Will
One will of mine, to make thy large Will more.
Let no unkind, no fair beseechers kill;
Think all but one, and me in that one Will.
Hard to read, and doesn't make a lot of sense, right? But note that word, "will" (and include "wilt"). It occurs 14 times. But what does it mean? In Shakespeare's day, "will" had several meanings: it meant intention, desire, lover, lust, and the organs of that lust, both male and female. And of course, it was also William Shakespeare's own name!
So this sonnet is Will S. speaking to his one-time mistress, who seems to be going about with other men, and he is essentially stating his lust and begging for intercourse. He uses the metaphore of the ocean, which can accept all the water that pours into it through rivers and rain without overflowing, to suggest that she can handle him -- one more lover -- as well as all her others.
Try reading it again, and see where you would insert the name Will, or the meaning lust, or penis, or vagina. (Example: Wilt thou, whose will is large and spacious, not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine?) Now, isn't that a whole lot more interesting.