[Today's high schoolers are required to read] a couple of Shakespeare plays..the couple of Shakespeare plays function as an inoculation — that is, you get exposed to 'half-dead Shakespeare virus', and it keeps you from ever loving Shakespeare again, your whole life long. It would be much better if they didn't do that at all! Because [the students] have no linguistic preparation for it, and no cultural or historical preparation for it. They've not been reading English poetry, so the language strikes them as completely bizarre […] and they have no historical place to put it, so they don't know what's going on. All they know is that they're 'supposed to like it'. . Anthony M. Esolen
About This Quote

The point that the author of the article makes is that reading Shakespeare is a great experience and that everyone can enjoy it and can enjoy it and that no one will hate Shakespeare.

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  1. For those of you who may be homeschooled: high school is that four-year asylum where they put teenagers because we have no idea what else to do with them.
  2. [Today's high schoolers are required to read] a couple of Shakespeare plays..the couple of Shakespeare plays function as an inoculation — that is, you get exposed to 'half-dead Shakespeare virus', and it keeps you from ever loving Shakespeare again, your whole life long. It would...
  3. We think that mercy is a sweeter and easier thing than justice, but it is not so; for justice takes us as we are, but mercy assaults us and batters at the gates of our heart, demanding that we be made new... Sometimes sorrow is...
  4. The first good news for all of us, the first joyful story of our lives, is that there is a story at all, and an Author who has loved us into being.
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