Shakespeare: enduring relevance

Shakespeare: enduring relevance

Why Shakespeare still matters

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) wrote 38 plays and 154 sonnets that define modern English drama and have shaped the way English speakers articulate love, power, doubt and tragedy. Approximately 1700 expressions of everyday English come from him (break the ice, wild-goose chase, vanish into thin air).

Four pillars of the work

1. Tragedies — Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, Othello, Romeo and Juliet. Explore ambition, jealousy, doubt, the corruption of power.

2. Comedies — A Midsummer Night's Dream, Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing. Built on mistaken identities, gender disguise and the triumph of love.

3. Histories — the two tetralogies on English kings (Richard II, Henry IV parts 1 & 2, Henry V; Henry VI, Richard III). Question legitimacy and the burden of kingship.

4. Late "romances" — The Tempest, The Winter's Tale, Cymbeline. Combine tragedy and reconciliation.

Key themes

• Power and ambition — Macbeth: "Vaulting ambition which o'erleaps itself".
• Doubt and indecision — Hamlet: "To be, or not to be: that is the question".
• Love and identity — Sonnet 18: "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?".
• Race and outsiders — Othello: a Black general undone by Iago's racism and jealousy.
• Colonisation — The Tempest: Prospero, Caliban and Ariel offer a rich postcolonial reading (Aimé Césaire, Une tempête, 1969).

Devices to recognise

• Iambic pentameter: ten-syllable line with alternating stress.
• Soliloquy: a character thinks aloud, alone on stage.
• Aside: brief remark to the audience.
• Dramatic irony: the audience knows more than the characters.
• Pun / wordplay: especially in comedies and the Fool's lines.

Modern adaptations

• Cinema: Olivier's Hamlet (1948); Branagh's Henry V (1989); Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet (1996).
• Reimaginings: 10 Things I Hate About You (1999, The Taming of the Shrew); She's the Man (2006, Twelfth Night); The Lion King (1994, Hamlet).
• Stage: Globe Theatre productions in London; RSC at Stratford.

Sample problematic

Why does Hamlet still speak to 21st-century audiences haunted by political conspiracy and personal doubt?