Oh my. Just today I started reading A Midsummer Night’s Dream, first Shakespeare play read, ever. I printed it in Spanish (I’m from Argentina) and read it along with this BBC reading, which I tooootally recommend.
The ancient language is so unfamiliar, and therefore, dialogue doesn’t feel very natural – the same happened to me when I read Lord of The Rings, no matter how poetic, but the actors in the BBC radio show really tied it together for me. And the poetry! My heart. But, gotta love the Old English.
About 20 years ago I read the complete works of Shakespeare and loved the historical and tragic plays. Each was good and it seemed better than the previous one. I recall that I liked King Lear best and thought that Titus Andronicus was a bit strange, almost psychedelic but still good. I could not really get into the comedies I read a few but they were frankly not very funny so I didn’t read others. But I found Taming of the Shrew amusing and watched the Burton-Taylor movie version.