We shove the desks to the walls and create an enormous open space in the classroom. Forming a circle, we begin reading in unison:

Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life;
Whole misadventured piteous overthrows
Do with their death bury their parents’ strife.
The fearful passage of their death-mark’d love,
And the continuance of their parents’ rage,
Which, but their children’s end, nought could remove,
Is now the two hours’ traffic of our stage;
The which if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.

It’s time to begin Romeo and Juliet again, circling up for many readings of the prologue. We read it chorally; we read it individually; we read it by going around the circle and reading one word at a time; we divide the lines in half; we read to punctuation. By the end of the lesson, we’ve read it so many times that it’s familiar, almost comfortable.

It’s the start of a five-week adventure, wrestling with the text, learning to make sense of Shakespeare’s language, which is filled with inversions and omissions, antiquated words and allusions. Students begin with trepidation; they end with confidence.

It is undoubtedly one of the highlights of the year.