The ghosts begin in the wood, where all lost things are first mislaid.
A crown, a letter, a bloody handkerchief. A girl’s song folded under moss. A father’s voice caught in the mouth of an owl. The wood keeps them all, not kindly, but carefully, as women once kept lavender in linen, to sweeten what would otherwise decay.
There is a boy who enters at dusk with a candle and a borrowed name. He has been told that stories are made of ink, but this is not true. Stories are made of hunger. They are made of wanting the dead to answer. They are made of doors that open only after midnight.
Give me your question, says the ghost at the root of the oak, and I will give you a kingdom.
The boy has no kingdom. He has only a grief he cannot carry. He gives it.
At once the leaves turn black with ravens. A king steps out of the bark, crowned in frost. A queen follows, wringing river-water from her hair. Then a bride with flowers in her sleeves. Then a soldier with mud in his mouth. Then a fool, bells silent, smiling as if he knows the one joke God forgot to finish.
These are Shakespeare’s ghosts.
They do not haunt houses. They haunt choices.
The dagger before the hand. The word before the wound. The kiss before the poison. The little pause in which mercy might have entered and did not.
The boy asks why they have come.
Because you called us, says the queen.
Because you read, says the fool.
Because no one buries a story deep enough, says the drowned girl, and from her lips fall violets, rue, rosemary, a sprig of something nameless that smells like rain on a grave.
By morning the boy returns without his candle. In its place he carries a small dark flame that will not go out. He has learned what all readers learn eventually: the dead in Shakespeare are not dead.
The good news is that Shakespeare is much easier to read once you stop expecting him to behave like modern prose.
First: Shakespeare Was Meant to Be Heard
Shakespeare did not sit down intending to create silent academic suffering for future students holding highlighters in fluorescent classrooms.
He wrote for performance!
Many lines that seem confusing on the page suddenly make sense when spoken aloud.
If you get stuck, try reading the line slowly out loud, even dramatically, if necessary.
The Words Are Often Familiar, Just Rearranged Like Furniture
One of the main reasons Shakespeare feels difficult is that the sentence structure is constantly inverted.
Instead of:
“I do not know what you mean.”
You get:
“What mean you, I know not.”
The actual vocabulary is often less obscure than people expect.
Once you begin mentally rearranging the syntax into modern order, things become much easier.
“Wherefore” Does Not Mean “Where”
Juliet is not asking where Romeo is!
“Wherefore” means why.
She is asking:
“Why do you have to be Romeo?” “Why must you belong to the family my family hates?”
Let It Wash Over You
If you pause to dissect each unfamiliar word, you lose the flow. Keep moving and try to sense the mood. Aim for a general understanding at first. You don’t have to analyze every word right away to appreciate the atmosphere.
Approach Shakespeare as you would a walk in foggy weather: notice the broad landmarks first, and details come into focus with time.
The Emotion Is Usually Simpler Than the Language
This is the secret sauce that makes Shakespeare so human.
Underneath all the ornate phrasing, the emotional core is often startlingly direct.
Hamlet sounds philosophically intimidating until you realize large portions of the play are essentially: “Everything feels terrible, and I don’t know what to do.”
While Macbeth is basically saying, “Ambition has ruined my life.”
King Lear is “I made really catastrophic parenting decisions.”
And Romeo and Juliet is obviously “Teenagers continue making impulsive and dangerous choices.”
Shakespeare Is Weird
Shakespeare’s plays are often intentionally strange. The stories can jump from comedy to tragedy, or from gentle moments to sudden harshness.
Characters sometimes talk in riddles, make puns, or let their emotions spill out without neat conclusions. This unpredictability is part of what keeps the plays interesting.
Watch Adaptations
Shakespeare wrote plays to be performed and enjoyed!
Watching film adaptations, seeing stage performances, listening to audiobooks, or reading modern versions can make the language feel more accessible and emotionally vivid.
Don’t Try to Conquer Shakespeare
You are allowed simply to experience the plays.
Some passages will open for you immediately, while others may take years. And that’s part of the beauty. Shakespeare survives because his plays continue unfolding across a lifetime, changing as readers themselves change.
The syntax eventually softens, and somewhere beneath all the plot twists and Elizabethan phrases, you suddenly realize the plays were speaking directly to human longing all along.
The question reveals more than it first appears. Imagining Pre-Raphaelites on social media lets us consider that their work wasn’t just painting, but creating images with mood, persona, symbolism, and a sort of self-mythology. They weren’t merely making art; they were building worlds. This impulse remains relevant in today’s social media sphere, where we, too, construct identities and realities.
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was founded in 1848 by seven young artists and writers in England, including Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais, and William Holman Hunt. Their name showed they wanted to break away from what they saw as formulaic and boring academic rules in Victorian painting, and to return to the bright colors, detail, and honesty seen in Italian art before Raphael. This wasn’t just a small preference. It was a bold artistic movement.
From the start, they spread their work through letters, journals, exhibitions, reviews, patrons and personal networks. They built strong followings, and both shocked and charmed people. Essentially, they already recognized the power of a platform.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Rossetti would have thrived on Instagram. It brings together everything he loved: images, words, mood, and personality. He’d post close-up shots of rich fabrics, dreamy faces, and symbolic objects, with captions that felt like part poem, part challenge. Some themes would keep showing up. There would be a pomegranate. No one would really know why, and that mystery would make it even more interesting.
Proserpine, Dante Gabriel Rossetti
He would also be great at blending real life with performance. The Pre-Raphaelites cared deeply about beauty, but for them, beauty was never simply decoration. It was full of memory, medieval themes, desire, faith, sadness, and hints of stories. Social media loves this kind of layered symbolism. One picture can suggest a whole mood or set of values. Rossetti would get this right away, and he’d probably enjoy reading the comments, even if he acted like he didn’t.
Sir John Everett Millais
Millais, on the other hand, might have had a trickier time with social media. His early paintings were extremely detailed and technically impressive, and he painted plants with careful accuracy. You can imagine him posting process videos that amaze viewers with their detail. Here’s the hem. Here’s the waterweed. Here are seventeen steps to painting a hand that turns out to be much harder than expected. He’d run the kind of account that makes people want to try oil painting, until they realize they don’t have the patience or sharp eyesight for it.
The Black Brunswicker, Sir John Everett Millais
But Millais also shows us that public image can change. Over time, his style moved from the strict, detailed Pre-Raphaelite look to a bigger, more popular style. Today, some people might call that “selling out,” while others would say he was just adapting, making a living, and connecting with his audience. The debates would go on and on, and they’d be interesting.
William Morris
Then there’s William Morris, who was close to the Brotherhood and would be a key part of this imagined social feed. Morris wouldn’t just share objects; he’d share his whole philosophy of making things. Textile patterns, fonts, wallpapers, manuscripts, workshops, dyes, labor, craft, and his dislike of ugly mass production would all show up. His account would start with beautiful images and finish with you thinking about industrial capitalism. You’d come for the wallpaper and leave questioning the meaning of everyday objects.
This thought experiment is more than just a playful idea. It helps us see what links the Pre-Raphaelites’ world-building to today’s platform culture. The Pre-Raphaelites worked where art, technology, mass reproduction, and public attention met during a time of big changes in Victorian Britain. Instead of rejecting modern life, they responded by creating new worlds inspired by imagination, craft, and historic styles. This careful balance between old and new is a lot like how we use social media now.
Today, many people use social media to build a different world, not just to talk to others. Sometimes this world feels supportive; other times, it’s just a shiny illusion, and often it’s both. We gather objects, values, and styles, and arrange them carefully to say: this is what I love, this is what I resist, this is who I am when it feels right.
The Lady of Shalott, William Holman Hunt
The Pre-Raphaelites knew that beauty is persuasive. Their art is rich, but never just about looks. Their images invite us to look deeper, using religion, literature, legend, and history to stir emotions. Social media works in a similar way: a carefully chosen image can show what matters, what’s desired, and who we are.
The Pre-Raphaelites knew both the appeal and the risks of focusing so much on aesthetics. Wanting to make life beautiful is a natural and worthy human urge. Noticing texture, color, symbols, and shapes isn’t silly, it’s a way of paying attention and saying the world has meaning, not just usefulness. I don’t want to give that up, and I doubt they would either.
Lady Lilith, Dante Gabriel Rossetti
But beauty, if left unchecked, can also become slippery. The Brotherhood’s world, full of symbols and longing, sometimes lets real women, work, and grief fade into the background. Their art gives us beauty but also a warning. Style can help us see things more clearly, or it can take over. It reminds us of the urge to turn feelings into mood boards before we really think about them.
So the real question isn’t just whether the Pre-Raphaelites would use social media, but how thinking about them helps us see the purpose and effects of how we build our own online selves.
They would probably remind us that social platforms reward intensity, recognizability, and myth, just like their art did. They would show how easily aesthetics turn into identity, and identity into performance. Most importantly, they would ask us to remember that decoration isn’t the enemy of truth. Sometimes, it lets truth sneak in quietly. In our fast-paced digital world, caring about thoughtful creation and genuine feeling can be a form of resistance.
The Pre-Raphaelites would have done well online for the same reasons they did in paint and print: they believed details and stories mattered, and that surfaces could hold meaning. They would have chosen what to share carefully, maybe even shared too many symbols. And they definitely would have posted lots of lilies.
And maybe, after all the velvet, clever captions, and medieval style, they would leave us with one simple lesson: whether you’re an artist or just scrolling, mean what you share. Don’t let the performance become more important than substance. That’s a good rule for both the Pre-Raphaelites and for us in our digital lives today.
In a recent interview, actor Timothée Chalamet stirred up controversy by saying ‘no one cares’ about ballet and opera anymore, and defenders of both art forms took to social media to set the record straight. Many argued that just because something isn’t to someone’s taste doesn’t mean it’s lost its value. Alex Beard, who runs The Royal Ballet and Opera, said ticket sales have actually increased thanks to the attention. It’s funny how one offhand remark can spark a conversation about what matters in culture and how easily personal opinion is mistaken for universal truth.
Here’s The Royal Ballet and Opera’s Instagram response to Chalamet’s comments:
When people say no one cares, they often just mean that they don’t care, or that their friends don’t care. That’s not the same thing.
This pattern is longstanding.
Admirers of Pre-Raphaelite art know this script by heart.
The Day Dream, Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Founded in 1848, the Pre-Raphaelite movement challenged stale academic routines. The Brotherhood sought sharper observation, richer symbolism, and more focus on beauty, nature, and emotion. It was never just decorative. It was meant to matter.
In the twentieth century, the Pre-Raphaelites were often criticized as excessive, sentimental, or embarrassingly lush. ‘Overly sentimental’ was a common rebuke, but the real issue often lay in the open expression of strong emotion.
Importantly, this issue is not confined to Victorian England or the mid-twentieth century. Even today, some critics continue to dismiss Pre-Raphaelite art.
Jonathan Jones observed that ‘a lot of critics disdain this period,’ and in his review of the Burne-Jones exhibition at Tate Britain several years ago, he described it as ‘how boring beauty can be’ and declared Burne-Jones to be ‘a stupid artist.’
The Beguiling of Merlin, Sir Edward Burne-Jones
These attitudes may seem discerning, but are often habitual. Beauty is dismissed as superficial, narrative as naive, and emotion as weakness. Critics can appear more unsettled by art that evokes strong responses than by art that fails to engage.
Here, Chalamet’s episode and the Pre-Raphaelite story meet. Both show how personal dislike is confused with cultural judgment, and how authority figures shape what is deemed significant.
A recurring pattern of scorn
Ballet and opera are called elitist or dull. Pre-Raphaelite art is labeled sentimental, decorative, or excessive. The terms change, but critics persistently dismiss them, then act surprised or scornful when the public remains interested.
Nevertheless, audiences continue to attend these performances and exhibitions.
This persistence is key. However labeled by critics, audiences engage. This is not naivety. Audiences see what critics overlook: beauty, atmosphere, emotion, and art that invite appreciation.
Of course, this does not mean all criticism is wrong.
Acknowledging that critics can be dismissive does not suggest that critique itself is unnecessary.
Some Pre-Raphaelite works are uneven or excessive. Some raise questions about gender, idealization, medievalism, empire, and the politics of beauty. Those questions matter; serious criticism helps us see and understand more.
However, it is important to distinguish between critique and contempt.
Critique involves careful and thoughtful examination. Contempt feels performative and superficial.
Personal dislike does not constitute cultural judgment.
It’s easy to conflate personal dislikes with genuine judgment. Historically, critics have often proclaimed the demise of art forms they did not favor, confusing personal opinion with cultural fact.
Yet these art forms persist.
They live on because they are vital.
Art endures through those who passionately engage it. Its vitality comes from devoted audiences: proof that meaning and value are not bestowed by critics, but earned by ongoing, genuine appreciation.
