I have seen a number of live performances of Shakespeare as well as film adaptations ( the latest being the Merchant Of Venice with Al Pacino as a very good Shylock) and I enjoy them. I try to read the plays too but I find that harder.

For me Dickens, Austin and the Bronte's are the same. I can enjoy a good fim adaptation but I find them hard to read, nonetheless I am trying.

A post above mentioned the way that Shakespeare was taught in school. We did MacBeth and analysed it to death. Surely the plays were written as entertainment and primarily should be seen as such. Given the sort of crowds that would have filled the Globe in his day I do not think that they would have done much analysis apart from throwing rotten veges at poor actors.

BTW we also did Chaucer's Cantabury Tales in the original old English and that certainly had us reaching for the dictionaries.