I agree there is rather too much to learn. My current year 10 pupils are generally of lower than average ability but even some of the more capable are finding both the translation and the number of characters difficult to remember. Does anyone else find the translation is very challenging for pupils? Mine tell me the English is more demanding, particularly in terms of vocabulary, than what they do in English Lit. Therefore I spend a lot of time producing summaries for them so they get an idea of the story first, then we tackle sections of the actual text. Yet I don’t have time to go over the whole text in detail as we have to keep stopping for dictionary checks or checking glossaries. Am I alone in this???