Why Shakespeare?

Although he lived about 400 years ago, Shakespeare is such a dominant figure in our culture that people after all these years are still fascinated by who he was and why he wrote what he did.

Who was he? Even though we know a lot more about Shakespeare than we do most of his contemporaries, his genius is so great that people have always speculated about him as a person. One of two portraits which date from his lifetime, this picture shows that he was well known in his own age as a poet and a playwright. In the mid-nineteen century some people, however, began to question his identity. Some argued that Shakespeare's plays could not have been written by a man so uneducated and so limited in his background. Others asserted a man so obviously lacking in aristocratic values, so apparently driven by making money could not have written so much beauty and wisdom. They proposed that some more aristocratic or better-educated person wrote the plays. The problem with all the alternatives that have been put forward is that they require us to believe that the men who worked daily with Shakespeare for twenty years or knew him as a friend were either duped or part of a massive conspiracy which none of them ever revealed. Almost all literary scholars, however, are sure that William Shakespeare existed and made a living by writing plays and acting in them

How popular is he? The fact that you're taking this class is one indication of his continued popularity. Shakespeare is the only writer who has his own individual course in our college curriculum. In this country there are over 100 theater companies which perform his plays every year, many of them in summer festivals, such as the California Shakespeare Festival in Orinda, the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival or the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland. Movie versions of his plays are still made regularly, and there are even films in which he appears as the central character. A recent public opinion poll named Shakespeare "The Man of the Millenium!" (Thanks to Dolores Ramos for this information.)