I've quoted the American poet John Ciardi several times before, and I'm about to do so again: "Poetry is like vodka;" he once wrote, "it has to be diluted". I bring this up because in trying to make my case for Shakespeare being at the center of the high school English Language Arts curriculum, one of the greatest attributes that the study of his work entails is the fact that it requires peripheral reading. Just as we would not visit a distant country without reading about it first, the same is required to understand and appreciate poetic literature. Criticism, history, philosophical parallels, performance practices, etc. are all areas of further, and necessary, study in trying to grasp the width and depth that Shakespeare contains, and this is precisely what schools should be encouraging. And, to put it simply, there isn't a better way to do it.