“Iconoclastic” as I am thought to be on race, I have been struck by how equally unexpected one view of mine has been considered: that much of Shakespeare’s language is impossible to comprehend meaningfully in real time, so much so that most first-time viewers of a Shakespeare play are understanding grievously less of the meaning than they are aware.

Of late, I had a chance to retest my impressions, since the Royal Shakespeare Company is currently doing five Shakespearean plays in repertory in New York and I just caught their magnificent As You Like It. Note, I said magnificent—it’s not that I do not esteem Shakespeare. However, after an exchange on this subject with David Crystal last summer (upcoming in Voice and Speech Review), I was interested in testing my convictions under what many consider the ideal conditions for experiencing Shakespeare: I am often told that the comprehension problem all but vanishes when the plays are performed with top-notch British actors. Even the acoustics were right, as the RSC has actually reconstructed their theater inside the Park Avenue Armory (ah, real government subsidies for the arts).

First, however, I should dispel two possible misimpressions. I am not arguing that Shakespeare’s language can be too “dense” or “poetic,” but that it can be simply incomprehensible because of the passage of time. Also, I am referring to taking in the language through the ear during a live performance, not reading and referring to footnotes. In any case, the question at As You Like It: When an excellent and highly trained British actor delivers Shakespearean language a few feet away from us, can we always understand the basic meaning of the sentences he or she utters?

I found that the company’s high level of skill, including the lucid staging and direction, indeed did much to get across the language’s meaning. It left me still uncomfortable that it takes these kinds of chops to pull it off: After all, there are only so many companies like this. But more to the point, in more than a few places, even in this production, it was quite impossible to follow the meaning. Not because the actors weren’t doing their job, but simply because time has passed.

The problem is words’ changing meanings. This was especially problematic with Touchstone’s lines. Here he is in his scene with Audrey the goatherd (Act III, Scene III). After some cynical whimsy about the nature of honesty, beauty, “sluttishness,” and the best synergy between them, I fell off a cliff when Touchstone launched into this passage about entering into marriage with Audrey: