Ever need help on Antony and Cleopatra, As You Like It, The Comedy of Errors, Hamlet, Henry IV, Part I, Henry IV, Part II, Henry V, Julius Caesar, King Lear, Macbeth, The Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, Othello, Richard III, Romeo and Juliet, any of his sonnets, The Taming of the Shrew, The Tempest, or the Twelfth Night? This website is here for the rescue. No Fear Shakespeare provides a side-by-side version of Shakespeare’s original play and a modern version that we all can understand. Example?

Original (Prologue in Romeo and Juliet):

Two households, both alike in dignity

In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,

From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,

Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.

From forth the fatal loins of these two foes

A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life,

Whose misadventured piteous overthrows

Doth with their death bury their parents’ strife.

The fearful passage of their death-marked love

And the continuance of their parents’ rage,

Which, but their children’s end, naught could remove,

Is now the two hours’ traffic of our stage—

The which, if you with patient ears attend,

What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.

Modern:

In the beautiful city of Verona, where our story takes place, a long-standing hatred between two families erupts into new violence, and citizens stain their hands with the blood of their fellow citizens. Two unlucky children of these enemy families become lovers and commit suicide. Their unfortunate deaths put an end to their parents’ feud. For the next two hours, we will watch the story of their doomed love and their parents’ anger, which nothing but the children’s deaths could stop. If you listen to us patiently, we’ll make up for everything we’ve left out in this prologue onstage.

CliffsNotes

Like No Fear Shakespeare, CliffsNotes helps the reader understand what something means in a college-bound book. The website has in-depth analysis or short-cut summaries. It has a character map that shows how each character relates to the other. I used this website to help me study for a test about The Odyssey and without it, my ‘A’ would not have been guaranteed. Example?

Q: What does the first chapter of the Kite Runner mean?

A: Chapter 1 opens with the words “December 2001.” A nameless narrator immediately refers back to the winter of 1975, when the narrator “became what I am today” and obliquely mentions an event that occurred in an alley when he was twelve years old. The narrator then mentions a phone call last summer from a friend in Pakistan, Rahim Khan, and unatoned sins. Going for a walk, the narrator notices kites flying in the San Francisco sky. He recalls Hassan, the harelipped kite runner and list names such as Baba, Ali, and Kabul. The chapter ends with another reference to 1975 and the assertion that the event that transpired in the winter of 1975 “made me what I am today.”

Word of the Week

Contumacious(adjective) stubbornly perverse or rebellious; willfully and obstinately disobedient.

Provided by: dictionary.com

Example

“Trouble?” echoed my sister; “trouble?” and then entered on a fearful catalogue of all the illnesses I had been guilty of, and all the acts of sleeplessness I had committed, and all the high places I had tumbled from, and all the low places I had tumbled into, and all the injuries I had done myself, and all the times she had wished me in my grave, and I had contumaciously refused to go there. (CliffsNotes)