“The Bard of Avon”, “England’s national poet”, “the greatest dramatist of all time”: these are just some of the epithets that have been bestowed upon the playwright and poet who has come to dominate our consciousness as well as our theatres: William Shakespeare.
Such is the adulation for one man that the Globe Theatre in London dedicates itself to the performance of a multiplicity of his plays each year, while the Royal Shakespeare Company plays host in his birthplace of Stratford-upon-Avon, attracting a plethora of acting talent to play Shakespeare’s leading men from Ian McKellen to David Tennant. It is commonplace to see two or three of the Bard’s plays making an appearance in Cambridge’s theatre calendar each term, and there are numerous annual touring groups, such as CAST, the Pembroke Players’ Japan Tour, and the ETG, that stage Shakespeare’s plays across the globe. The attraction to the Bard is not just national; he is a part of school curricula in countries as diverse as Azerbaijan, Poland and Hungary, and is widely studied in translation elsewhere, either at secondary or university level. The English Tripos even includes a compulsory Shakespeare paper for its first year students.

It is a cultural obsession that George Bernard Shaw bitingly dubbed ‘Bardolatry’, an excessive worship of Shakespeare. In our vigorous study of him, we forget his contemporaries – playwrights that were also highly talented and skilled poetic craftsman, such as Kyd, Marlowe and Jonson. It is to the detriment of these poets and their works that we glorify Shakespeare above all else, to the extent that many generations may never read, see, or hear mention of the magnificence of The Spanish Tragedy, Doctor Faustus or The Alchemist. It seems that Shakespeare has moved beyond the name of a dramatist into a name that is associated with nationalistic pride and ‘high culture’, a symbol of literary and cultural prowess. Quoting ad lib a few lines from Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy, or just attaching the name to a semi-meaningful quote you found off Tumblr (‘I can’t make everyone happy, I’m not a pizza’ – William Shakespeare), is guaranteed to score you intellectual brownie points.

Yet there is something strangely prescient in Jonson’s referral to Shakespeare in the Preface to the First Folio as “not of an age, but for all time”. It is the universal nature of the themes about which he writes, such as loyalty and ambition in Macbeth, or identity and pride in King Lear, that make themselves startlingly relevant as themes of the human experience. Alongside this is the sheer breadth of Shakespeare’s literary works: tragedies, histories, comedies, he covers the main ranges of humanity, and excels in them all. Within them lurks ideas about life and death, dialogues regarding English history and Elizabethan society, overwhelming discourses on love and overtly sexual, bawdy puns; there really is something for everyone.

His characters, from fairy kings and queens to cross-dressing women, can step out of the page or from the stage as characterisations of quintessential humanity. It is no wonder, then, that films such as 10 Things I Hate About You, based on The Taming of the Shrew, strike such a chord with its audience; its popularity is not due to its association with Shakespeare, but due to the relevancy of its discussion upon ideas such as gender politics and the vibrancy of its characters (with a little help from Heath Ledger, of course).

And who can deny the compellingly beautiful lure of his words, be it Lady Macbeth’s fatalistic “Life’s but a walking shadow”, or the elegiac Ariel’s Song – “Of his bones are coral made” – in The Tempest. Even renowned poets such as Keats, who deemed Shakespeare his “Presider” – both a God and a Muse – were pressed upon by Shakespeare’s poetic verse and inspired to achieve the same in their meter. The relentless influence of his poetic craftsmanship has pervaded our everyday communication, with most of us being completely ignorant of it; if you have ever uttered that you’re “in a pickle” an hour before an essay deadline, or referred to yourself as the “green-eyed monster” when you caught your lecture crush dancing with someone else at Cindies, then you have the Bard to thank for the eloquence of your expression.

Shaw may have blasted it as ‘Bardolatry’, but even he acknowledged the brilliance and brightness of the idol at whose altar everyone worships; the man who roused envy and frustration for his “enormous power over language” and his “prodigious fund of that vital energy”.

To live on over 400 years after his mortal death, reincarnated in the global enactments of his plays and in the minds of students and readers alike, is testament to the human value of his legacy. His works, the characters and poetry that encompass them, and the performances that materialise them, will justifiably ensure that the name of Shakespeare continues to ring loud in the public consciousness, “passing through nature to eternity”.