Song lyrics are meant to be sung, recipes are made to be cooked, and Shakespeare is made to be performed and watched. Reading Shakespeare from a book is an American school tradition, but it makes less sense than reading recipes you never intend to cook or taste.

Shakespeare is the fodder for many graduate degrees, and can be one's life's work, but it's not the big mystery some would like you to think it is. With very little expense or effort you can introduce your family to Shakespeare and if they have a sparkly interest, with another few dozen dollars or so (less than the cost of one college course) you can all become experts.

Here is the secret: RENT VIDEOS. That's easy. If you're around big video rental stores, you'll have no problem. If you're out in the country, you might need to use interlibrary loan, or mail order some videos. The wonderful think about videos is that you can pause, rewind, turn them off and think for a few days. You can pause and look things up. You can pause and call your friend who knows about Shakespeare.

Shakespeare's plays are categorized as histories, tragedies and comedies. Here's my recommendation for a basic starter set. If you watch these and discuss them with your family, the kids will have had a better introduction to Shakespeare than most high school students have ever had in the U.S. All are readily available for rent. For the tragedy, choose Romeo and Juliet (Zeffirelli, 1968) or Hamlet (the one with Mel Gibson; Zeffirelli, 1990). History: Henry V (Branagh, 1989). Comedy: Much Ado About Nothing (Branagh, 1993) or Twelfth Night (Nunn, 1997)

Either buy used or check out from the library a Shakespeare collection (or individual little books for title if you find those cheaper) so you can see what the plays look like on paper--what stage directions they have, who the characters are, and what sorts of things are edited out to keep the play under two hours. If that seems interesting you can rent the Brannagh "Hamlet" (1997) which has the entire text and lasts nearly four hours. If the text you've found has introductory material and footnotes that's best. If you have choices, I'd recommend The Riverside Shakespeare. If you have a "Complete Works of Shakespeare" of some sort without notes, look (in used bookstores first) for Cliff's Notes or Monarch Notes for the play. Those will discuss characters and summarize the action.

Another source for information is a book which tells the stories in prose form. One is by Charles and Mary Lamb, Tales of Shakespeare. You might find others. You don't have to read that to the kids, you could just read it yourself so you can help explain the action if the videos confuse them.

If you have the opportunity to take your children to a live performance, even a student production, that's another good plan, but New Mexico isn't a hotbed of Shakespearean production.

If you have access to the internet, poking around for Shakespearean sites might be fun for you and your children. Try this: www.sunfield.or.jp/gpwu/door/todokoro/shakelink.html, or search for a site called "Green Eggs and Hamlet."

After you've gone that far, you will probably have come upon lots of books about Shakespeare's life, videos of other plays, related art, music, and humor--all sorts of things. There is an incredible book on Shakespeare for $10 from Usborne books. It would be the best I'd ever seen if it were three times that price. My oldest son, when he knew I was writing this, recommended the new "Romeo+Juliet" with Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes. Parental guidance is advised on that one, but my 11 year old son watched it straight through and understood it and recommends it I'd start with the period setting (the Zeffirelli) first before going to modern setting, personally.

At that point you could quit forever and your children would have enough exposure to Shakespeare to know whether they would like to pursue it further. If you keep all the activities light and fun, nothing forced or treated as a required bit of drudgery, you might find that you AND your children will be on the lookout for opportunities to see more Shakespeare and to find trivia and history between plays and movies. Have fun!