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Audiobooks are great, but if you are not a native English speaker you will probably understand even less when you listen to it (at least that’s my experience). So if you have trouble understanding an old English book, get a student edition. At school you probably read classics in your language and at least in germany we have student editions where outdated obscure German words and grammar are explained at the bottom and those exist in English too. ( I think there is something like „Shakespeare no fear“ etc.) Or get a student version in your native language for students studying English, where the text itself is the original, but the annotations are in your language. I know a lot of people are ashamed of buying student versions because they think their English should be good enough, or they won’t have the „real experience“ or something like that… that’s bullshit. You are not a native English speaker, and you are most certainly not an (insert time period of work you’re trying to read) native English speaker so naturally you will have trouble understanding some words, or even the whole text. And if you just read through it without understanding a thing, it will be boring, exhausting and you will gain nothing at all. Let me tell you there are classical German (my native language!) authors I would not dare to touch without an annotated version, because they write in a crazily complicated style in outdated terms. So buy that damn student version and enjoy your classic!
Not to be a pretentious asshole but yes there is a problem with people no longer reading the classics. A lot of the YA literature romance novel crowd perpetuates the myth that the classics are inherently boring and stuffy and there’s nothing you can relate to or learn by reading them. And they’re not. These beautiful universal things we enjoy, comedy, romance, tragedy, family strife, they’re still so poignant centuries after they’re written.