Ah, Shakespeare! The Immortal Bard is, alas, the bane of so many students, at least in the English-speaking world. Who among us hasn’t endured month-long lessons on Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, and Shakespeare’s other great and not-so-great plays?

 And yet, as a fan myself – who uses language to better effect? – I wasn’t ready to give up on him in my own teaching. Predictably, my students groaned when his name appeared in the syllabus.

“Don’t worry,” I assured them, “we’re reading just a few of his sonnets.”