I decided that even though I've studied Hamlet a good few times, I would like to find a new way of reading. I have often "translated" Shakespeare into more benign (or modern) English for friends or family who don't sit around and read his works on a regular basis. I wondered what it would be like to introduce the Prince of Denmark to a group of men as far from Shakespeare as possible: science geeks and math dweebs.
My experiment:
Begin by selecting a group of subjects for the study. I chose apartment 9, which consisted of two Computer Science majors (Matthew and Michael), and two Mechanical Engineers (Brandon and Andrew).
Announce the activity and assign roles. I went with just telling the boys that they were going to be reading Hamlet out loud with me, and that they would have a good time doing it. I spoke their native language...
Me: *Point and grunt* "Brandon, you Polonius!" *point at next boy, then to page* "Andrew, you Ghost. Ghost dead king. *grunt* Good?"... and so on and so forth till the parts were assigned. When we ran out of people, we improvised with falsetto ranges, random stuffed things lying around, and having conversations with ourselves.
Read. This was thrilling. I've seldom been so entertained in my life. The boys took some things very literally (such as the Ghost speaking from beneath, when Andrew crawled under the coffee table to bellow "Swear!" every time he was kicked), and made comments that really made me think about the text. When we got to some especially long passages, it took pretty long to get through them because if you're not used to reading Shakespeare, you're just not used to it.
Collect and analyze the results. Hearing the familiar lines read aloud (slowly) by a new voice (not mine) made me think again about what the words were actually saying. And how absolutely ridiculous Polonius is. And why does Hamlet tell the First Player a list of ways to perform and to not perform the speech, and then tell him to use his own judgment? Reading the play aloud to myself was insightful because I couldn't zone out on myself and "sleep read." Reading it aloud with energetic boys (who turned out to like the activity, just like I said they would) brought to life a new dimension of the play. I got a small taste of AMATEUR Shakespeare theater.
Conclusions. These boys have energy, but they don't know a hawk from a handsaw. Reading Shakespeare may seem intimidating at times even for an English major, and downright dreadful to a math dweeb, but fun can be had by all with it.
