Relevance of Shakespeare in our age.

[holdencaulfield]

Eliot defined Shakespeare's characters not as real but as "living".
in perspective, the observation still holds true because we can relate to them as ordinary human beings one of us.
of course, we may not be princes of denmark or thanes of scotland or dukes of illyria but we are "living" and for that same reason "possible".
a lot many people make a lot many criticism about shakespeare's universality.but the fact remains, when shakespeare was writing he didn't set out to be "universal".he was writing about real people living in a real society.

[Chinaski]

It's what goes on off the page/stage - the hints Shakes. gives us that makes em so real.
Human nature is human nature, and that is what makes him so universal.

[bootyqueen]

I agree.... I feel that Shakespeare is still relevant and I would venture to say it always will be as long as we're humans behaving like humans...

[byquist]

Harold Bloom somewhere mentions a scarry observation and, I regret admitting it, but it sure seems fairly true. He said that Shake's characters, when we get to know them, are more real than the people we encounter on a daily basis in our real life.

They certainly are "larger" than many, and for some of us -- all, of the folks we run into. And since many of our acquaintances are fairly surface or temporary, and our relation with Shake's characters last a long time, Bloom might be right.

[holdencaulfield]

No artist can reproduce on page or stage the whole spectrum of human nature.shakes peare, i think, came closest to presenting the whole vibgyor, not only through his characters but the conditions he placed them into and see them evolve as potentially 'real' human beings.even the most comic of his comic characters go through a well-defined process of anagnorisis.