Comment by ben_w

> Which is a huge part (subtle contexts in poetry, etc)

Certainly, but from what I remember of my GCSE English Literature back at the turn of the millennium, my fellow students and I didn't understand most of that subtly even when it was famous poets in our native language.

Shakespeare may be unsurprising in this regard given the age (why eye of newt and leg of toad? Some say common names of herbs, others that it's just some amusingly vulgar items), but we were also just as oblivious to the lived experience of being gassed in the trenches as per Dulce et Decorum Est or a cavalry charge as per The Charge of the Light Brigade in English as we would have been if this had been a second language.