Also the vast majority of kids in my Michigan HS in the 90s had trouble with Shakespeare. The school district was almost entirely white, largely blue collar. The language is tough for many kids. But I've also seen teachers get 5th graders so invested in Shakespeare that they loved & memorized it.

(I fell in love with Shakespeare in 5th grade after seeing a high school production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. I loved it so much when I got home I grabbed the Shakespeare book from the shelf - ironically my parents had never read it, it was still shrink-wrapped - and read it on my own.)