Does William Shakespeare's Poetry Really Reach Us Anymore? Come On---Really?

"The problem is whether Shakespeare's English is the language we speak at all. English of the late 1500s presents us with a tricky question: At what point do we concede that substantial comprehension across the centuries has become too much of a challenge to expect of anyone but specialists? "

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I doubt that I could understand the Middle English if read aloud to me, but reading it in a side-by-side version, it doesn't take that long to get a feeling of the rhythm and the language to the point where the Middle English starts to feel familiar and the Wife of Bath (my favorite tale) a friend speaking in a language you actually understand.  

 I have removed the hyperlinks in the ME version. However, on the library site they have a glossary and the hyperlinks in the ME version leads you straight to it.

From Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales:

From The Canterbury Tales:
The Wife of Bath's Prologue
lines 1-34: The Wife of Bath mentions her five husbands

The Prologe of the Wyves Tale of Bathe

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http://www.librarius.com/canttran/wftltrfs.htm

I have voted for #5 on this poll.

Hollywood celebrities have gone to London to seek redress over reports of wayward kisses.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/25/business/media/25libel.html?ref=europe

No, reckless, juicy, tasty and wayward rekissing. And no smackers, please.

Nanna

When is a kiss just a kiss? 

Post #115324

It is difficult
to get the news from poems,
yet men die miserably every day
for lack of what is found there.

William Carlos Williams

http://www.spcsb.org/advoc/poetrytx.html

[snip]Though poetry as therapy is a relatively new development in the expressive arts, it is as old as the first chants sung around the tribal fires of primitive peoples. The chant/ song/poem is what heals the heart and soul. Even the word psychology suggests that, psyche meaning soul and logos speech or word. In mythology Oceanus told Prometheus, "Words are the physician of the mind diseased." Though it was recorded there was a Roman physician named Soranus in the first century A.D. who prescribed poetry and drama for his patients, the link between poetry and medicine has not been well documented. It is interesting to note, however, that the first hospital in the American colonies to care for the mentally ill, Pennsylvania Hospital founded in 1751 by Benjamin Franklin, employed several ancillary treatments for their patients including reading, writing and the publishing of their writings in a newspaper they titled The Illuminator. The term "bibliotherapy" is a more common term than poetry therapy, which became popular in the 1960’s and 1970’s, which literally means the use of literature to serve or help. Freud once wrote, "Not I, but the poet discovered the unconscious." Another time he said, "The mind is a poetry-making organ." Later on, many other theoreticians such as Adler, Jung, Arieti and Reik wrote of how much science had to gain from the study of poets. ...

I like version 2 most.