Shakespeare’s language feels difficult mostly because of unfamiliar vocabulary and word order, not because the ideas themselves are complex. A few tools make it much easier:

• Thee, thou, thy — older forms of “you” and “your,” often used between people who are close or speaking informally.
• Iambic pentameter — most lines have 10 syllables in an unstressed-stressed rhythm (“But SOFT, what LIGHT through YONder WINdow BREAKS”). Reading lines aloud in this rhythm often makes the meaning click faster than reading silently.
• Inverted word order — Shakespeare often puts the object before the verb (“Him have I lost” instead of “I have lost him”). Try mentally reordering the sentence into modern word order.
• Wordplay and puns — many jokes, especially Mercutio’s, rely on double meanings that would have been more obvious to Elizabethan ears.

You don’t need to translate every line — focus on following the overall meaning of a passage, then look more closely at any single line your teacher or the text highlights as significant.