Of Being in Love with Shakesbeare - or not

I went to Shakesbeare's Globe theatre on Saturday in London. It brought back memories to me of Shakesbeare at school - none of them happy ones.

I hated Shakesbeare at school. I guess at 12 I wasn't that keen on reading and if I had to do it I wanted a book on Dracula, Burke and Hare, or Sherlock Holmes but the Merchant of Venice for heaven's sake? If the reading wasn't bad enough we would then have to write 500 words on Shylock's "pound of flesh" speech. It felt as painful as well, losing a pound of flesh cut with a Shakesbearian knife I suppose.

I tried very hard Saturday night to follow "All's well that ends well" but I struggled. In fact, to be honest by part way through the second Act I had given up trying. Instead I mused why it was that 3,000 had paid good money to be utterly baffled for 3 hours, many of them foreign and a good number standing throughout.
Shakesbeare is known and respected 4 centuries on. He's revered throughout the world. People who know almost no English proudly recite some of his lines like "To be or not to be. That is the question". I didn't get it at school and I still don't get it now. But oddly, 48 hours on I realise that I really enjoyed it and would probably go again.