I have to side with Sonya here. I was once on a program to read many, many more plays, some of which I only dimly remembered myself or were totally unfamiliar to me. We’d all begin them, and then I’d start blushing and coughing and saying “Uhhhm, let’s skip to the next scene” so often, I just gave up. I am going to try to do one play a year, repeating if need be, and I am vetting each play carefully first! I’ve even taken the liberty to remove a few lines from the copies of the plays my children read from. I didn’t remember all of this from when I was young, or perhaps I just had no reason to worry about it, but I am NOT reading some of those lines with my babies, even if they have no idea what they mean!
I also have decided that in most cases, I am NOT allowing my children to have in hand copies of plays that define and interpret lots of lines, as it seems to me that they make some of Shakespeare’s lines go from risque to rated R. If they don’t understand a part I’ll be the one to decide how much they need to know. One of my children had a Folger Library copy with “explanations” in it, and he did not understand the main lines, so looked up the explanation, and did not understand it either, but I did, and I nearly died! And one of the most vulgar is the No Fear series. Yikes!
So anyway, having been “burned” I am much, much, much more cautious now and like not feeling “pressured” to read nearly every play.
Michelle D
