Miriam A. Laube as Rosalind and Danforth Comins as Orlando in the current Oregon Shakespeare Festival production of As You Like It. Though it is set in 1930s America, you can see that the two main characters, the central lovers, also look contemporary. That adds to their appeal, especially with young audiences who can identify with them. By making the characters look modern, there would seem to be potential for cognitive dissonance with the heightened Elizabethan language. Why there isn't is fascinating. For one thing, when the actors know what the words mean, they can convey that meaning through intonation and body language as well as with words. But the words themselves are mostly quite comprehensible, even "modern"--and that includes the lines that aren't "cliches" from being adopted into our argot and familiar quotations.
When the audience is motivated to understand the language--when they are identifying with the characters, vicariously experiencing the action, and participating in the story (wishing for things to happen, guessing what might happen, wanting to know what will happen, etc.) then they may let the beauty of the language wash through them. It can even become one of the sensuous pleasures of this experience.
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