simplified Shakespeare

Some people have gotten hysterical over simplified versions of Shakespeare. A man in a poetry group I was in wrote a very funny poem about it. Some of the examples I have seen have had pretty graceless language. But I see nothing wrong with the concept of introducing students to Shakespeare with a version more understandable to today's people. My first introduction to Shakespeare was versions by Charles and Mary Lamb. They made me interested in reading Shakespeare in the original.

I've never seen anybody complain about translations of Chaucer, or translations from a foreign language. English has changed enough since Shakespeare's time to be a semi-foreign language.