Is Shakespeare Relevant Today

This paper explores the question of whether Shakespeare and his works are still relevant to the culture of today. Shakespeare remains relevant through the themes of love, identity, and death, and relate to the issues and feelings of the modern world. Love can be related to how people act with their partners, mainly regarding sexual love, and can be seen in the innuendoes and scenes Shakespeare used and those used today. Identity can be related to modern times by how Shakespeare used the plot device of having his characters present as either a different person or a different gender. Death can be related to today by how Shakespeare portrayed his characters feelings of death and the afterlife to how people today view death and the afterlife. These

The theme of love can be found throughout almost every play Shakespeare wrote and can be seen in its many forms, one of his favorite forms being sexual love. Shakespeare loved making references to and outright portraying sexual love between two (or more) people. The most prominent example of this is Shakespeare’s play The Taming of the Shrew. Taming of the Shrew deals with two main love stories, with many, many sexual innuendoes and scenes. Katherine is the rude, outspoken sister of the lovely Bianca. It seems as though every man wants to court Bianca, but she cannot be married until her elder sister is married off. To solve this issue, the suitors of Bianca hire Petruchio to woo Katherine, Bianca would then be available. When Petruchio and Katherine meet, arguments ensue and innuendoes form. “What, with my tongue in your tail?/ Nay, come again, I am a gentleman-” (Shakespeare, Mowat, & Werstine, 2014, p. 91) says Petruchio in a heated argument with Katherine. This is less of an innuendo and more of an outright sexual statement, referring to a vulgar sexual act that he says he would not do since he is a gentleman. Petruchio and Katherine seem to be driven by a heated, sexual love for one another, with both playing off each other during arguments. Similar to the sexual love seen in Taming of the Shrew, sexual love is prominent in the daily lives of most adults. It can be

The most well-known example of this is Twelfth Night, or What You Will, a play covering the issues of love-triangles, gender identity, and sexuality. In Twelfth Night, Viola disguises herself as a man, Cesario, so she can get a job and live comfortably after her ship crashes on an island. Due to this, identities become confused and hilarity ensues. To relate these concepts to a contemporary audience, the movie She’s the Man was created. That movie takes the plot of Twelfth Night and puts it in the setting of a high school boarding school. Viola poses as her twin brother Sebastian, and in the meantime- falls in love with her roommate, Duke Orsino. The movie relates the issues of gender and sexuality in a modern way, while still containing the humorous facets of the original play. In the modern day, while fewer people get mistaken for someone else, there are still many issues with gender identity and identities in general. Many people identify and present as a gender other than what they were assigned at birth, relating to the main aspect of this play. While Viola does not fully transition to a man, she does live as one for a substantial amount of time, which could be compared to how people present and live as another