Shakespeare—Bard of the One-Liners

When I was a teenager, I didn’t get Shakespeare. I groaned aloud in class when we had to read any of his plays—save for Romeo and Juliet. Maybe because the lovers were around my age. Or maybe it was because the 1968 film by Franco Zeffrelii was steaming hot. As a young teen, it was one of the few sexy, romantic movies I could get away with watching, because I was learning something. Oh, baby, thouest did indeed. ;)

Fast forward to my sophomore year of college. I begrudgingly took a class on Shakespeare to meet my English requirements. However, when we read our first play, Hamlet, and dissected the prose, I didn’t think I was reading the same stodgy story from my high school days. For the first time, I understood the meaning behind the iambic pentameter. Maybe it was the passionate teacher who unlocked the mystery behind the words for me, or maybe it was being older and somewhat wiser that I recognized the essential story about the human condition and commentary on society that transcended time across 400 years.

Read more at Romance on the Rocks and learn some Shakespearean insults.