Doeth Youeth Speaketh Shakespeareth?

This semester I have been studying a year ten English unit called 'Heroes and Villains', designed and taught by LA QUIN. As part of our study of the tragic hero, we have studied Antigone, and we are now studying Macbeth, the Scottish Play.

When I was younger I had this aversion to Shakespeare - I couldn't read it. I didn't understand it. It was the kind of thing where it went out one ear and out the other. And, to be honest, I honestly cannot understand people who can read a Shakespeare play and enjoy it.

You see, the written forms of Shakespeare's plays are scripts, and scripts are inevitably boring, unless you have a trained eye and keen interest for them - no matter how fascinating and enthralling the play/movie is. I mean, a story needs pictures, adjectives, actors, CGI, to make things come to life. Reading a script, with very little description, makes for a very boring read. It is very hard to picture it, methinks, because I'm one of those people who rely heavily on the descriptive, visual side of things.

But Macbeth is truly fascinating - and I actually understand it now, because we are not only studying the script but a recording of it, and a visual novel. Macbeth is the quintessential man, corrupted by temptation - ironically, Sean Bean plays him in one production, and he also plays another man who falls from grace after the temptation of power is presented to him (Boromir). Lady Macbeth is a bitch. There is no kinder way to put this. But still, I love her.

But what is, for me, the most exciting thing is the concept of murder - and how it haunts the mind before and after the deed. I swear, if we made everyone read or watch Macbeth we'd have no more murderers in society - it would swear anyone off the act of taking a life. Lady Macbeth's sleepwalking, Macbeth's hallucinations of bloody daggers and ghosts of the murdered - it really chills your bones. Shakespeare, the world's first plaguerist, undeniably has a vivid imagination.

Oh, and the title 'Doeth Youeth Speaketh Shakespeareth', is from a playground language of 'Shakespeareth' - obviously, being the ignorant grubby children we are, we fail at reading and speaking proper Shakespearean. There is a variant of Shakespeareth - we call it Latinus. Dous Yous Speakus Latinus?