When I read this Joss Whedon interview on my phone I wanted to keepsake what he said about appreciating Shakespeare. Of course, I mislaid the link and it took me a while to find it again. Thus, here, as a quotation with a link back of course, is what he said:
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At school, I'm aiming to follow both ways. In future, I'll have a Joss Whedon film to aid me.
[Interviewer]I must admit, I am someone who needs to study Shakespeare to understand the dialogue. What is the threshold that one can cross to get a deeper appreciation of the language?
[Joss Whedon] There’s two ways. One is you really pick a play apart and you go over it and you understand all of the references and the intent. Just everything that he’s doing in terms of character, in terms of talking about humanity, in terms of even punning, the rhythms. The more you get into it and learning his basic vocabulary, that’s really useful. However, it pales beyond seeing a good production, because a good production of a play or a good movie of it will give you something that all the study in the world can’t. It will give you the humanity of it. When you access that, the language almost becomes secondary. You can understand it without necessarily understanding what it is exactly is being said. If you understand that the person who’s saying it is really f***ing angry at the other guy and you know why, then you’re in the story. Then gradually the language seeps in.
Source
At school, I'm aiming to follow both ways. In future, I'll have a Joss Whedon film to aid me.