How to read a Shakespeare play?

Just read the plays.

Yes, it often helps to watch a performance of the play. Most of the "online sources" are crap. Get a good printed edition of the play with an introductory essay and footnotes by a real Shakespeare scholar. Your library probably has lots of these, and used-book stores often have them for individual plays at very cheap prices.

1. "Oxford School Shakespeare Series" has a book about each play.

Three general perspectives:

2. Martin Lings' "Shakespeare's Window into the Soul;"

3. Harold Bloom's "Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human;"

4. Peter Ackroyd's "Shakespeare: The Biography;"

And,

5. The "Shakespeare Collection Gift Box Set" has perhaps the best motion picture versions (Cagney's 1930s "A Midsummer Night's Dream," Olivier's "Hamlet," Welles' "Othello").

If there's a movie on YouTube - Hamlet, etc. - you absolutely have to watch it. In fact, it would be worth your while to rent any Shakespeare movie or see a stage show. It makes all the difference in the world.

A problem is that in writing the screenplay, they're apt to cut things here and there, so be sure to read the play too.

I don't know how much Oliver changed the language of Henry V, but "That's a perilous sound from a pop gun" is not in the original. (Pop gun: a toy gun, seen in the 20th century.)

Isaac Asimov wrote for the general audience, not academics, which made him very suitable as a translator of Shakespeare's English. He wrote a guide to Shakespeare.