Google research: https://answersrip.com/question/index?qid=20100523153656AALhS0r ''Shakespeare's plays deal with life's most intense emotional realities and moral choices. Why is love important? How does being in love change our lives? Knowing that we're going to die someday, what's the right way to live in the meantime? What, if anything, is worth dying for or killing for? Those are just a few of the questions that the characters in Shakespeare's plays deal with on every page. Shakespeare's poetry helps us to see those issues with extra clarity.''
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/9797617/Shakespeare-and-Wordsworth-boost-the-brain-new-research-reveals.html
Scientists, psychologists and English academics at Liverpool University have found that reading the works of the Bard and other classical writers has a beneficial effect on the mind, catches the reader’s attention and triggers moments of self-reflection.Using scanners, they monitored the brain activity of volunteers as they read works by William Shakespeare..They then “translated” the texts into more “straightforward”, modern language and again monitored the readers’ brains as they read the words.Scans showed that the more “challenging” prose and poetry set off far more electrical activity in the brain than the more pedestrian versions.Scientists were able to study the brain activity as it responded to each word and record how it “lit up” as the readers encountered unusual words, surprising phrases or difficult sentence structure''Lighhting up” of the mind lasts longer than the initial electrical spark, shifting the brain to a higher gear, encouraging further reading.The research also found that reading poetry, in particular, increases activity in the right hemisphere of the brain, an area concerned with “autobiographical memory”, helping the reader to reflect on and reappraise their own experiences in light of what they have read.. “Serious literature acts like a rocket-booster to the brain."The research shows the power of literature to shift mental pathways, to create new thoughts, shapes and connections in the young and the staid alike.”In the first part of the research, the brain activity of 30 volunteers was monitored as they read passages from Shakespeare plays, including King Lear, Othello, Coriolanus and Macbeth, and again as they read the text rewritten in simpler form.While reading the plain text, normal levels of electrical activity were displayed in their brains. When they read Shakespeare, however, the levels of activity “jumped” because of his use of words which were unfamiliar to the readersIn one example, volunteers read a line from King Lear: “A father and a gracious aged man: him have you madded”. They then read a simpler version: “A father and a gracious aged man: him you have enraged.”Shakespeare’s use of the adjective “mad” as a verb sparked a higher level of brain activity than the straightforward prose.The study went on to test how long the effect lasted. It found that the “peak” triggered by the unfamiliar word was sustained onto the following phrases, suggesting the striking word had hooked the reader, with their mind “primed for more attention.''
http://homeworktips.about.com/od/englishhomework/tp/readingshakespeare.htm ''For a beginner, Shakespeare can sometimes seem like a bunch of strange words put together in no sensible order. Once you learn to read and understand Shakespeare, you'll find out why it has inspired students and scholars for centuries.Understand the Importance of "Getting It" It is impossible to overstate the importance of Shakespeare’s work. It is clever, witty, beautiful, inspirational, funny, deep, dramatic, and more. Shakespeare is a word genius whose work helps us see the beauty and artistic potential of the English language. Shakespeare's work has inspired students and scholars for centuries, because it also tells us so much about life, love, and human nature. When you study Shakespeare, you find that human beings haven’t really changed all that much over the past several hundred years. Shakespeare will expand your mind if you let it.''
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-smigelski/how-to-enjoy-reading-shak_b_1445153.html ''In everyday speech and writing, we usually put the subject of a sentence before the verb. Shakespeare very often did the opposite for reasons concerning poetic rhythm and meter. Take this line from Romeo and Juliet: Never was seen so black a day as this.The subject of that sentence is "day"; the verb is "was seen." We would usually write the sentence like this:A day so black as this was never seen. But Shakespeare chose a more poetic way to say it. After all, finding poetic ways to say things was his forte. He often played around with word placement, so be on the lookout for it...when you finally meet William Shakespeare on his own turf and