Monday, April 23, 2007
Commentary: 443 years later, Shakespeare still matters
Post Gazette: "Happy birthday, Bill Shakespeare! If you were still around, you'd be 443 today -- but the fact is, you are still around, the dominant theatrical brand in the Western world, so alive and omnipresent that on stage and screen no one would believe you're that old."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
while i think that high school literature is becoming outdated, i can't imagine a society in which nobody will pick up on shakespeare allusions, simply because they havent read his plays...
How nice of Post Gazette to mention CMU for a production that we did long ago. So Bill's work still matters 400 years after his death. That's some intense influence on the modern society, right there. I really doubt there can be anybody who would ever be as influencial as Bill did across the time and culture.
Shakespeare IS still around. He is performed constantly, read in English classes everywhere. Shakespeare is someone that everyone knows the name of, and it will continue to be the most acclaimed and well loved literature we know.
I think that a lot of high school curriculums don't embrace Shakespeare enough or in the right ways. I remember having to read his plays and hating it when now, I love them and don't understand why I didn't like them before. Part of it, I think, is this hype about him and no explanation of why other than that "he's the best." I understand the impact he has had on literature and playwrighting, though I didn't really understand that until I got to CMU.
Post a Comment