Shakespeare’s plays are, at best, a little complicated.

At worst, they are a perplexing jumble of non-words and should automatically be tossed into the flames. I spend much of my time hunting for Shakespeare lines that I can take to fit my own sinister intentions out of context, so we know this well.

But some of the plays by Shakespeare are better than some to sound right of. I have graded them in order of how open they are to the modern, hardly even reader for your comfort.

Disclaimer: We haven’t listed any of Bard’s plays, but we believe we can all accept that at least a few of them have been recorded. Throughout your research, we have sought to incorporate the ones you’ll most likely come into. We did not include Timon of Athens, for starters, and no one on earth is reading this.

Romeo Juliet

Romeo and Juliet 

Easiest

Credit: Media for Relativity

There are no subplots; it is just a short ride from Spot To spot, with Stage A “falling in love with a girl you barely saw at a gathering once” and Point B representing “Death Encompasses Everyone.”

Look, faking your own demise when it comes to unnecessarily active parents is (just about) not the answer. (Almost. I don’t understand your life, and I’m not going to try to.) That said, it should not be argued that as a play, if not as a how-to guide for resolving disputes, Romeo and Juliet are probably comfortable. There’s an explanation of why every English class in America is on the curriculum. It’s not just because it is so approachable, and we’ve all seen it.

Much Ado about nothing the movie

Much Ado About Nothing

Credit goes to Fox’s 20th Century.

You’ve seen this film before. We are going to bet my name on that.

Much Ado About Nothing is an Elizabethan rom-com, except that rather than two couples rushing into each other’s embrace at the airport to a generic pop song’s soaring tune, there’s a man who feels his true love is extinct only to find that-surprise! She’s alive and married to them!

Literally, Much Ado has it all: gala balls, flirting, archaic gender stereotypes, and someone trying to fake their own death to teach lessons to somebody else. This was a light-hearted romp in Shakespeare’s day, and it’s relatively easy to swallow as a play.

Twelfth Night the movie

Twelfth Night

Credit goes to Dreamworks.

This is your typical boy who meets a girl, a girl who falls in love with a boy, but a girl who disguises herself as a male. Boy falls in love with this girl then (but not the first girl, another one); this girl, sadly, is in love with the first girl, thinking that she is a gorgeous stud. The first girl’s twin brother finally returns, discovering that he didn’t actually die in the shipwreck (there was a shipwreck, by the way), but everyone ends up satisfied.

Sounds deceptive? It really isn’t! Currently, the play inspired the 2006 film She’s the Man, which I hope all of you watched and memorized. Amanda Bynes performs as the girl, and Channing Tatum portrays the kid. Vinnie Jones is somewhere there, and that the only way to put the record straight at the end of the film, for whatever reason, is for everybody to get exposed. We feel like we’ve missed the slideshow thread a little bit. Twelfth Night is essentially a convenient and straightforward read, and the peak of cinema is She’s the Guy.

Midsummer night’s dream by Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Credit goes to CBS Services.

The storyline is simple enough to understand. The four main protagonists are in love with each other. This is horrible. Then some local fairies plan to use them as their own play style. They run away into the woodland. Shenanigans follow.

The most complicated thing that can be said about Midsummer is that it depends on innuendo often. Often, both of the two primary female characters have names that start with the letter H. We can’t remember who’s who for the life of us without Googling it.

I know that this is a lot like thinking that it’s impossible to discern between Colin Creevey and Cedric Diggory because their names contain identical characters. Still, I’m a simple girl with limited skills, and I need to be alphabetically versatile in all original characters. Is it a lot to ask?

King Lear

King Lear

Credit goes to Channel Four.

This one isn’t wildly unintelligible. Really, it’s fun to read (you know, as tragedies go). The issue? At any given time, there are like twelve things going on.

King Lear wishes to split his kingdom among his three children. Still, Cordelia, his favorite, refuses to flatter him to persuade him of her affection. Lear approaches this with a prudent and aged ruler’s grace and patience, so he throws a tantrum and discards her from the realm. With the help of their husbands, the Duke of Cornwall, and the Duke of Some Other Vaguely Significant Territory, his two remaining children, Regan and Goneril, begin exploiting him.

There is also a trio of love, a fool of a king, and a subplot of a hamfisted illegitimate prince because if an unlawful heir is not attempting to claim what is rightly his, is that really a Shakespearean tragedy?

Macbeth

Macbeth

Credit goes to The Weinstein Company.

And if what you know about that is that there’s a guy called Macbeth around here, we can tell you that your alley is undoubtedly up there. About why? Even though we operate under the presumption that this is of benefit to everyone, whenever there is a fight scene, a bunch of dudes trying to pick up some sticks and try to pretend to be a forest. Are we incorrect?

Macbeth is a roller coaster ride of sentiments. The explanation it’s studied in schools so much is that the plot is visceral but straightforward. The downward spiral of Macbeth into madness follows his rise to dominance, but, for example, it does not have precisely the same terrifying psychological undercurrents as Hamlet. The plot is strong but straightforward. Macbeth wishes to be king. He was threatened by certain witches that it would be so. Other things happen, but this is all that’s needed to keep this mad train going for all intents and purposes. Done? Ready? Go. Go. Go.

Ohello by shakespeare

Othello

Credit goes to Columbia Pictures

It is not hard to wrap your head around the plot, but it is a disaster. It comes with some incredibly massive and nuanced themes, thus. We’re worried about suicide, envy, toxic masculinity, bigotry, and a lot of prejudice. Still, it’s not just the sort of play where you can just skip and hope to completely grasp.

Nevertheless, Iago does say at one point, “Virtue?” Fig! A fig! And if I’m truthful, it sort of makes it worth the entire thing. No one, ere or later, has written a line that strong.

Shakespeare Hamlet

Hamlet

Credit goes to National Theatre Live

Let’s take a dive for a hot second in my worldview. I love watching Chopped. That said, I sometimes like to do other stuff while not actually paying all of our dedication to Chopped. It’s one of those programs where you don’t have to carefully watch everything; you can just have it on and encourage it to happen. This way, we have absorbed much of the episodes, and we strongly recommend it.

There are shows like that, and then there are shows like HBO’s Westworld, which I’m rapidly finding is not one of those shows that you should “just have on.” One minute, people ride horses over a dusty horizon, then the next, you look at a ton of stripped robots in a factory.

Hamlet is like Westworld; the trip is satisfying, but without throwing in any work, you can’t hope to get anything out of it. It’s like Chopped the Twelfth Night (obviously).

Richard III

Richard III

Credit goes to Wikimedia Commons

The features are not for the faint of heart, nor is the picture for this particular slide that I have picked, and I’m very sorry for that. Poor of mine. I just think it’s essential for all of us to note that this is what he looked like because we can’t reverse history no matter how many times we cast Cheekbones Cumberbatch to play him.

While Richard III is one of my favorites and a dark, richly told historical tragedy, it is also the scourge of our ordinary life as a culture.

There are about 50,000 characters (like one-third of the Game of Thrones cast), but as someone who can really really keep on top of at most between one and four, it’s been dark days for me, really.

Even if you want to pick up on any of the less actual examples, you must read Henry IV (parts 1 through 3). I am a brazen, black-hearted viper, but instead of that, we scrolled the Wikipedia summaries.

Shakespeare Julius Caesar

Julius Caesar

The credit will go to MGM.

You think for one minute, “I’ve heard about this guy.” “This is going to be fine.” The next one parses nonsensical expressions such as “O, pardon, sir, it doth; and yon grey lines” for sense, and tomorrow is due for your article. It might not be the toughest, but in the park, it’s not a stroll. It’s dry, it’s always political, and if you like that kind of thing, then you’re a guy of a higher caliber.

This picture is from the 1953 movie version, which I haven’t seen before, so it so happens to me that I have to rectify it right away.

 

Shakespeare Cymbeline

Cymbeline

The HARDEST

Credit goes to Lionsgate

What’s the matter with this one? Well, nobody does. There are specific patterns, a couple of motifs, the occasional subplot. There’s Jupiter. Why’s there a Jupiter? Well, why isn’t he meant to be?

If you are made to read this complicated mass of blank verse by your teacher, their hearts are empty, they never enjoy something, and don’t imagine in color.

For the perplexed: this screenshot is from the adaptation of the 2014 movie starring Ethan Hawke. “Somebody probably asked, “What if they did Cymbeline, except we did it about gang members?” to which someone else responded, “IMMEDIATELY Finance THIS.” And the first person said, “It’s a new version, but we’re going to retain the original Shakespearean dialogue, correct?”