"the words never quite tripped off my tongue"

Shakespeare How Salon's DG Strong discovered Shakespeare and discovered himself:

"The first few times I hid in the corner and read along silently. It took a few months before a freakishly low turnout forced me to sit at the grown-up table and read aloud from “The Merry Wives of Windsor.” At first, it wasn’t exactly a natural feeling, and no matter how many times I peeked ahead to see which line I’d get, the words never quite tripped off my tongue. I mangled a lot of lines. But there was no denying the thrill I felt when I managed to get to the end of a longish speech and realized there was a grin a mile wide on my face. Suddenly I wanted all the long speeches, all the big moments. From that moment on, the library would have to be on fire for me to give up my reading chair."

My experience was very similar to his, at least terms of comprehension. The more you read Shakespeare, like any unfamiliar language or at least use of language, the more you're able to understand.