Why Shakespeare Remains Relevant Today

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To the Editor:

Re “Who’s Afraid of William Shakespeare?,” by Drew Lichtenberg (Opinion guest essay, nytimes.com, Oct. 21):

As a managing director at the nonprofit Free Library of Philadelphia Foundation and former Shakespeare professor, I appreciate the financial difficulties that companies like Mr. Lichtenberg’s that produce Shakespeare’s plays are facing. But his statement that “Shakespeare’s plays tend to be big and expensive” is misleading, or at least limited in its perspective.

Some of the most powerful Shakespeare productions I’ve seen (and occasionally been involved in) have been produced on a shoestring budget, with minimal sets, simple costumes and actors playing multiple parts.

I understand Mr. Lichtenberg’s point, but it reinforces the misguided notion that the only way to produce theatrical results — and draw new audiences — is by spending money.

If Shakespeare is to survive, it won’t be through star-studded Broadway shows, exciting as those productions may be. It will be through productions in schools and colleges, in public parks and in parking lots, that introduce Shakespeare’s plays to new audiences and imagine anew the characters and the stories that have captivated us for centuries.

Daniel Blank
Philadelphia

To the Editor:

I recently overheard a conversation among young college students lamenting the teaching of Shakespeare and questioning whether anything he wrote could possibly have any relevance in a 21st-century world. This brought to mind (as did this essay) what Dame Judi Dench said on Britain’s “Graham Norton Show” (immortalized on YouTube):

“We quote Shakespeare all the time, perhaps without knowing it. You only have to go to those plays, and be in any kind of those situations — being in love, or being jealous, or being angry or being whatever. And you will find that there is a way of him summing up that is completely sufficient for what your emotion is.”

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Her observations are absolutely true. This is the reason his work is so malleable, so easily bent to address contemporary situations or stir controversy, as we have seen again and again in the more than 400 years since their composition. His work is a comprehensive contemplation on and explication of simply living in the world.