Why Do We Care About Shakespeare?

Amelia Moseley, BTN Reporter: Why do we still care about Shakespeare? [coughs] Whether you're a fan or not, it's hard to avoid the works of this Early Modern English, 16th century, playwriting, poetry-penning mysterious, goateed, son of a glove maker, also often referred to as the greatest writer in the English language. We can find him and his 38 or so plays in classrooms, unis and theatres all over the globe, and right there on our screens.

Anyone But You (2023): I can never be with someone like him. This girl's a disaster.

10 Things I Hate About You (1999): Yeah but see, there's difference between like and love, because I like my Skechers, but I love my Prada backpack.

The Lion King (2019): A true king searches for what he can give.

So, David, tell me why is Shakespeare still relevant today? And keeping in mind this is coming from someone who was in the Shakespeare Club in high school. So big fan, little biased.

David McInniss, Professor of Shakespeare and Early Modern Drama: Fantastic. I mean, Shakespeare is all around us, whether you love him or loathe him. His stories are surrounding us in contemporary culture. When you think of love, you think of Romeo and Juliet.

Romeo and Juliet (1996): Thus from my lips, by thine, my sin is purged.

When you think about someone with ambition, you think about Macbeth.

The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021): Something wicked this way comes.

David: The stories have come to stand in for a whole range of human emotions that we see coming up over and over again in the stories that we tell ourselves.

Shakespeare liked to describe all the twists and turns of life and the messiness of our emotions. And so it's those core feelings we can still relate to hundreds of years later, like fear, anger, jealousy, and love.

David: So I think part of the joy of reading and watching Shakespeare is finding ourselves in those plays, and I don't think that's accidental.

Shakespeare's Globe: Romeo!

Shakespeare also didn't write specifically about his life and times, but instead focused on bigger themes like death, romance, betrayal, ambition, and fate.

David: The fact that Shakespeare deliberately distances himself and his audience from what's around them, has helped in many ways for us to still be appreciating his work 400 years later.

This makes sense as to why, you know, so many movie adaptations work so well.

Anyone But You (2023): Convincing enough? Let's do it.

Student: My favourite adaptation of William Shakespeare was definitely 10 Things I Hate About You that's inspired by Taming of the Shrew.

It's so good.

10 Things I Hate About You (1999): That's Bianca Stratford. I burn, I pine, I perish. Of course you do.

I would have to say Gnomeo and Juliet. I think it was my first introduction to Shakespeare.

Gnomeo & Juliet (2011): I can't go. I know how you feel. No, really? I'm stuck.

I haven't seen it!

Student: You haven't seen it?

I haven't seen it, I know. Shocking. So you've all recently been performing Shakespeare, learning all about Shakespeare? Do you think there are qualities about these characters that kind of draw us in? Like, is it something that we can still relate to?

Student: Well, I played Hamlet. And I think he's a very jealous, toxic person who wanted what he wanted and didn't want, like, it's my way or the highway sort of situation. And I think those feelings are still very relevant today, because I know people like that.

Student: So I played Benvolio in Romeo and Juliet.

Romeo and Juliet (1996): Part fools. You know not what you do.

Student: And Benvolio and Samson have a sort of a feud. So even in high school, themes of jealousy, arguments, all of that is present today, like we go through that every day.

Student: I think the characters might not depict how someone would necessarily act today. But they capture how someone might feel.

Shakespeare's Globe: So humble that he had left part of his grief with me to suffer with him.

How has the language gone down with you?

Student: It's hard to get a grasp on at first, but there's like a point and once you break that wall, when you kind of get through it, you can understand it and make sense of it.

Student: After learning it in English, getting a deeper grasp of the language, it became then easier to perform it. I felt myself almost knowing and feeling those real emotions.

There's no denying the guy knew how to turn a phrase.

David: Or Hamlet saying, "There's nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." That idea that everything is subjective, it's all about how you see the world and how you respond. And there's nothing supremely original about any of the individual words in those sentences, but putting them together, those ideas in that really beautiful way, is, is very memorable.

So memorable, in fact, that hundreds of words and phrases he invented, or at least made popular, have worked their way into our everyday language, like swagger, tongue-tied, break the ice, seen better days, eventful, and stuff dreams are made of. So I guess the final question is, "to be or not to be" into Shakespeare?

So do you think it's good that we are still learning about Shakespeare when we're in high school?

Student: I think his works are always going to be relevant because there's always topics and themes that continue to be talked about from now probably into the future as well.

Student: Well, I think that all of Shakespeare's work is timeless. He has all these themes that will be present forever, real characters have real emotions, it's real stuff.