COMMENT ON THE RELEVANCE OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE AND HIS WORKS TODAY Last year the world celebrated William Shakespeare's 450th birthday and next year will mark the 400th anniversary of his death. It is now up to me to answer the question on how big the relevance of his person and his works still is today, which is a difficult task since I am neither very interested in him, nor have I read any of his plays. The topic can also not be generalized for the whole world and this is why my focus lies on our Western world. The themes and topics Shakespeare's dramas mostly dealt with were love, monarchy, religion, violence, betrayal, family and revenge (just to name a few) and they portrayed the brutality of his, more precisely the Elizabethan, era.