Two or three plays of Shakespeare are being read every year in every high school in America. It is a common experience of teachers that the pupils regard Shakespeare’s plays as the hardest part of the prescribed reading. One reason is that these dramatic poems are through a regrettable necessity made the text of lessons in language. The atmosphere of study and duty surrounding “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” in the classroom takes the charm out of that fairy play. This is not the fault of the teachers and it is not for us to criticise them; the wisest leaders in education have not found a way to make the study of Shakespeare in school less laborious than it is. And many of them think that it is well that lessons should be hard nuts to crack, that the young mind is better disciplined if its schoolday tasks are not made too delightful and easy. Some teachers believe that the old-fashioned hard digging at books is being in too large a measure replaced by kindergarten methods, which are so unadvisedly extended that even a geometry lesson is treated as a game. For the present we will keep our consideration of the uses and delights of reading apart from the problems of the schools, and regard Shakespeare as we regard Scott--a friend to enjoy in leisure hours. I should advise, then, that pupils who are reading Shakespeare in school select other plays than those prescribed in class and come to them as to a novel chosen for pleasure. If the class work requires a study of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” let the young reader try “The Tempest” by himself. If “Julius Cæsar” is a part of the winter’s school task, let us in vacation time slip “Macbeth” or “Henry V” into our pockets. And while our friends in the other hammock are reading a romance of the hour, let us be reading a romance of the ages. When we are tired of reading and are ready to play that game of tennis, our opponent, who has been reading a book that he bought on the newsstand at the railroad station, will not necessarily beat us, because we know what he does not know, that a gift of tennis balls comes into the plot of “Henry V.” The Dauphin of France sends Henry the tennis balls for a mocking gift, and Henry answers: When we have matched our rackets to these balls, We will, in France, by God’s grace, play a set Shall strike his father’s crown into the hazard. Tell him he hath made a match with such a wrangler That all the courts of France will be disturbed With chaces. That has a spirit which your friend will not find in the excellent story of a school game which he has been reading, “How Ralph Saved the Day.”