Why Shakespeare is not relevant in our lives

Is Shakespeare relevant in our lives? No.

According to the Oxford dictionary, “relevant” means: closely connected or appropriate to what is being done or considered. In this pragmatic light of the 21st century, many of us cannot relate to the stories Shakespeare has written. Besides that, we cannot even understand his language without googling almost every other phrase or sentence. To fully understand his works, we often require deep analysis. No one walks around talking in old English any more. We need to learn current English because that’s how we speak and write it and some people already have enough trouble with writing current English. To learn Old English just to understand Shakespeare’s works, to me, is like learning calculus and physics to work at MacDonald’s your whole life. In the day itself when Shakespeare and his shadow writers were putting up plays in the globe theatre, they actually based most of their stories on Greek tragedy. Those Greek tragedies existed in oral form first and then written form and now they exist today, so he didn’t really bring anything new to the table. Many of us read fiction and non-fiction books and without a doubt I agree that books in general serve as a medium to propagate important values to us and also elicite emotional and social dialgoue. However, Shakespeare’s works in particular do not exactly play that role in today’s society because the things he wrote about cannot be related in today’s modern context. A few examples of such irrelevant works to our lives would be: Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing and The Merchant of Venice.

For something to be relevant in our lives, it has to be related mostly to what we do and say quite often. Most of the time, it has to affect our decision-making and actions. On the contrary, I personally feel that Shakespeare’s works do not do so because I don’t find people relating back to his works most of the time, during their daily lives or even at all. They would usually relate their lives to modern books which are about modern issues, that we face in our lives. Now, that is what I call relevant. An example of this would be – To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee which is about personal growth, social justice and discrimination. This brings about debate and opens our eyes to many different perspectives of society, which will then enhance our understanding of the many issues faced in the world. Therefore, Shakespeare is not relevant in our lives because his stories simply dont teach us much about our world today, well, unless you’re a student closely analysing one of his books for your grand Literature exam.

Carrying on from that, I feel that the only type of people who would might find Shakespeare sort of relevant in their lives are mostly literature students. However, there has been a big drop in the number of students taking literature in Singapore: currently, there are 3,000 students taking literature, compared to 16,970 in 1992. As you can see, as the number of literature students drop, lesser and lesser students read Shakespeare and thus, lesser people would find it relevant in this modern day.
Shakespeare is of date, out of touch, and we read him, I'm convinced, out of habit. The world was a very different place during the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I & VI, when the persecution of "Papists" (ie Catholics) was the norm, witches were burned and the treasonous were tortured. Before Romeo and Juliet, the punters warmed up by watching a bear, chained to a stake, get torn apart by a pack of dogs.
To watch Shakespeare is to peer into a Britain where women are almost completely disempowered. In Much Ado About Nothing, Hero takes back her fiancé despite having to fake her own death in order to thwart his jealous rage. Let me ask, do we see these kind of things today. Shakespeare is out of his depth in a world which is looking forward to gender and racia equality. He cannot be a beacon for the future, because he belongs in the past.

As Renaissance led to Enlightenment, Industrial Revolution to the Digital Age, computers have changed our lives in ways that Shakespeare could not have imagined. What he did imagine was time changing everything, something that has come true for his writing.
As our language changes, older forms of English become more difficult and words themselves are harder, as glowing screens and convenient apps make the visual image, and having things done for us, the norm rather than the exception.
This is why Shakespeare’s place will be increasingly hard to defend. It is pleasant to think that he will remain central to our culture. But the high-water mark of his influence has already passed. It lasted for just a century, between 1870 and 1970.
Since that time, his works have declined in relative popularity. People know his reputation more than his words. Shakespeare will always be with us, of course, but eventually he will be what Geoffrey Chaucer has become: a brilliant author whose works can be read intelligently in the original by few people.

Children need to be mentally challenged with real issues facing today's youth. They have access to the most horrific crimes, injustice, poor politics, and religious confusion. We need to leave Shakespeare to the people interested in his work, and take time to acknowledge the real issues that teenagers click on the Internet that goes unspoken causing stress, confusion, and mental excursion. The majority of high school students would prefer to study works that pertain to more modern times. As time has progressed, many traditions, styles, and ways have been long forgotten.

The job of educators is to prepare students to face the world of today in order to succeed in a very competitive job market. There are other writers who talk in modern english who could teach you the writing skills you need to know without being bogged down with all the thees and thous.

But apart from all this, I understand why people still read Shakespeare. Personally for me, I enjoy reading it because his ways of expressions are beautiful but I would consider reading Shakespeare just a leisure. I wouldn’t consider it relevant because I honestly don’t learn many things I can apply to my life. Thank you.