‘A language that I understand not’ What do students find difficult when they read Shakespeare?

Murphy, Sean Edward and Culpeper, Jonathan Vaughan (2018) ‘A language that I understand not’ What do students find difficult when they read Shakespeare? In: British Shakespeare Association Conference, 2018-06-14 - 2018-06-17, Queen's University. (Unpublished)

Abstract

We will address the strangeness of early modern English for contemporary readers and audiences and consider how significant changes in the meanings of many words present challenges to teachers (at school and university) and performers. We will report on a pilot study investigating some of the problems do twenty-first century readers encounter when confronted with Shakespeare’s texts, and offer some suggestions as to how the new corpus techniques used in the Encyclopedia and becoming freely available to teachers can help to address these in the future.