How to Teach Shakespeare to Students Who Think They Hate It

Let’s be honest: the moment you write “Shakespeare” on the board, half your class checks out. You get the dramatic sighs, the slumped shoulders, the kid in the back who whispers “why do we have to learn this” just loud enough for everyone to hear.

I get it. I’ve been that teacher standing at the front of the room, holding a copy of Romeo and Juliet, watching thirty faces silently beg me to pick literally anything else.

But here’s what I’ve learned after years of teaching Shakespeare to middle and high schoolers who were convinced they’d hate every second of it: the problem isn’t Shakespeare. The problem is how we’ve been taught to teach Shakespeare.

So if you’re staring down a Shakespeare unit and already dreading it, these are the strategies that changed everything in my classroom.

Start With the Story, Not the Language

This is the single biggest shift I made, and it changed the entire energy of my Shakespeare units.

Before students read a single line of original text, I tell them the story. The actual, wild, dramatic story. Because Shakespeare’s plots? They’re unhinged. A teenage girl fakes her own death and her boyfriend kills himself over the misunderstanding. A king divides his kingdom between his daughters based on a flattery contest and it destroys everything. A group of friends gets lost in the woods and a fairy king drugs people with love potion for fun.

When you strip away the “thee” and “thou” and just tell the story, kids lean in. They’re interested. They have opinions. And then when you hand them the text, they’re not decoding a foreign language in the dark — they already know what’s happening and they’re reading to see how Shakespeare tells the story.

I usually spend the first day on plot summary, character introductions, and the historical context that actually matters (not a full biography — just the stuff that helps the play make sense). By day two, when we crack open the text, students already care about these characters.

Use Modern Translations Side by Side

I know this one is controversial in some ELA circles, but I’ll say it plainly: there is nothing wrong with giving students a modern English translation alongside the original text. In fact, it’s one of the most effective scaffolding tools you can use.

The goal of a Shakespeare unit isn’t to prove students can white-knuckle their way through Early Modern English with no help. The goal is for them to engage with the themes, the characters, the language choices, and the craft. A modern translation removes the panic and lets students actually think about what they’re reading.

I like to set it up as a comparison activity: read the modern version first to understand what’s happening, then read Shakespeare’s version and notice what’s different. What words did Shakespeare choose? Why does his version hit harder? What gets lost in translation? This turns the original text into a puzzle to solve, not a punishment to endure.

Let Them Perform It (Yes, Even the Shy Kids)

Shakespeare wrote plays, not novels. They were never meant to be read silently at a desk, and yet that’s how most students experience them for the first time. No wonder they think it’s boring.

Even a low-stakes read-aloud transforms the experience. Assign parts, have students stand up, encourage them to be dramatic about it. You don’t need costumes or a stage — just voices and a willingness to be a little silly.

For the shy kids (and I always have a few), I offer options: they can read a smaller role, be the stage director who tells people where to stand, or do a dramatic reading of a single monologue they choose themselves. The point isn’t to force anyone into a performance — it’s to get the words off the page and into the air, where they were always meant to be.

Some of my favorite classroom moments have come from a kid who swore they hated Shakespeare suddenly going all-in on a dramatic death scene. Once the text becomes something they do rather than something they read, the resistance melts.

Connect It to What They Already Know

Your students already love Shakespeare’s stories — they just don’t know it yet.

The Lion King is Hamlet. 10 Things I Hate About You is The Taming of the Shrew. West Side Story is Romeo and Juliet. She’s the Man is Twelfth Night. The Marvel Cinematic Universe runs on the same dramatic arcs Shakespeare perfected four hundred years ago: power corrupts, jealousy destroys, love makes people do irrational things, and family dynamics are messy.

I keep a running list of modern connections for every play I teach, and I weave them in constantly. When Juliet’s parents are pressuring her to marry Paris, I ask students: “Have you ever had an adult in your life push you toward something you didn’t want? How did that feel?” When Macbeth starts making worse and worse decisions, I ask: “Have you ever seen someone dig themselves deeper into a lie instead of just telling the truth?”

Shakespeare wrote about human nature. Your students are human. The connection is already there — you just have to make it visible.

Ditch the “Read the Whole Play” Approach

Here’s a take that might ruffle some feathers: you do not have to read every single line of a Shakespeare play to teach it well. In fact, for most middle school and many high school classes, reading the entire play is what kills the momentum.

Instead, I choose the scenes that matter most — the ones that carry the biggest themes, the most dramatic turning points, the best language — and we go deep on those. The connecting scenes? I summarize them. We watch a film clip. I tell them what happened and we move on to the next important moment.

This isn’t cutting corners. It’s being strategic about where you spend your instructional time. A student who deeply understands three key scenes and can analyze Shakespeare’s language in those scenes has learned more than a student who skimmed all five acts and remembers none of it.

Make the Language a Game, Not a Test

The fastest way to kill a Shakespeare unit is to hand students a packet of vocabulary definitions and tell them to memorize Elizabethan English. The fastest way to save one is to turn the language into something playful.

Some activities that work well in my classroom: Shakespeare insult generators (students combine Shakespearean words to create their own insults — they love this one), translation races (pairs compete to “translate” a passage into modern slang), and “Shakespeare or Rapper?” games where students guess whether a quote came from a play or a song lyric.

The point of all of these is the same: get students playing with the language instead of fearing it. Once they realize that Shakespeare invented words like “eyeball,” “bedroom,” and “lonely” — words they use every single day — the distance between them and the text shrinks dramatically.

The Real Secret

None of these strategies are complicated. None of them require expensive materials or months of planning. They just require a shift in mindset: instead of asking students to come to Shakespeare, you bring Shakespeare to them. You meet them where they are — with the stories they already love, the language they already speak, and the big questions about life they’re already asking — and you show them that this guy from four hundred years ago was asking the same questions.

That’s when the magic happens. That’s when the kid who groaned on day one raises their hand on day ten and says something so insightful about a character’s motivation that the whole class goes quiet.

That’s the moment you teach for.

Ready to Make Shakespeare Click in Your Classroom?

If you’re looking for done-for-you Shakespeare resources that use these exact strategies — modern language scaffolding, performance-ready formatting, and activities that actually engage students — check out my Shakespeare resources in my TpT store.

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Every resource is designed for real classrooms with real kids who need Shakespeare to feel relevant, not like a history assignment.

Ali Morris is a middle and high school ELA teacher and the creator of Best Class Ever, where she builds resources that make teaching literature feel less like pulling teeth and more like the best part of your day. Find her on TpT or follow along on Pinterest for weekly teaching ideas.