In a message dated 11/25/2005 12:39:42 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,  
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

after  the first realization of the fact that the characters are speaking 
Elizabethan  English, you totally forgot about it 


*********************
 
Horrors! To forget about all that amazingly beautiful language!   :-P
 
OK OK....I know what you really meant. 
 
But that happens for me even in a period version of Shakespeare. I mean  it's 
just MODERN English after all. It's not Middle or Old English, y'know.  
Shakespeare rarely used now obsolete words and sometimes, but not THAT  much, 
archaic meanings to perfectly good Modern English words.....and then the  
meanings 
are usually perfectly clear via context.
 
The 1st thing to realize is that Shakespeare is not some language unto its  
own. Just very good and creative English.
 
Getting back to your original notion of "forgetting" the "not  
conversational" English....IOW being swept along with the idea of it all... 
This  happens in 
opera too. Like Shakespeare, the word "opera" immediately puts up a  wall for 
a lot of people. It's too high brow to understand! That wall in both  cases 
is an illusion. After you "get" everyone in opera is singing [with  supertitles 
and subtitled film, the language isn't that much of a barrier  anymore], that 
"disappears" too and one just goes with the flow. 
 
The non-existent wall that prevents otherwise intelligent people from  
enjoying these delights of Opera and Shakespeare is sewn, here in America  
anyway, 
by the anti-intellectual brigade. Those usually sports-soaked numb-nuts  that 
seem to be "kewl" in school and never really leave college for the rest of  
their lives. Ignorance is bliss....I guess.
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