Middle English was a thing of the past when Shakespeare wrote. We know that some words were pronounced differently--check his sonnets. However, the language is still pretty much the same. The 'great vowel shift' was happening during the Bard's time--according to Jespersen (sp?), it occurred from the 14th to 18th centuries, and that affected the way the language was both spoken and heard. The 'great consonant shift' had already happened (8th-10th centuries) and coincided with the begining of the Middle English period and the end of the Old English period. I hazard that most people will encounter no more difficulty with 'Elizabethan English' as used by Shakespeare than they do with Shakespeare as we have heard him presented by actors with all kindsa accents. IMO.