Adding on to the goals I posted previously, 'fleshing them out' you might say: I read probably twenty different plays by Shakespeare in high school - which gave me breadth, but not really depth. I also took a Shakespeare class from UVU before I transferred which examined about four plays in depth. After all this studying and learning and readcing, I still don't seem to have even scratched the surface.
To make my goals brief I could just say I want to be able to : read, understand, analyze, participate in, and use Shakespeare in the world of today. there's got to be a reason the guy is still famous and being read. He's not quite as old as Socrates and Plato, but he's probably quoted more!
As well as just sitting down with a 'good play' it's important to actively engage it. I want to watch movies, watch plays, read criticism, talk with my peers, etc. about Shakespeare.
One day I got so involved in Hamlet that when my roommate came back from school I started talking Shakespearean to her - she gave me a 'you poor thing' grin and said, "I think you've been reading too much Hamlet."
However . . . Shakespeare is interesting and what he writes is still applicable in our day (alright, so we're not all princes and princesses whose father has just been murdered, but there are other things.) There's something about the questions Shakespeare poses that lets us, or even asks us, to answer them. I think that's the power of Shakespeare - he talks to us, each of us, (if we can understand what he's saying and in what language he's saying it), in a powerful, personal way.
