Why William Shakespeare’s Plays Are No Longer Relevant

Plays written by William Shakespeare are irrelevant and have no place in modern society including modern school curriculums. During the 16th century when these plays were written they were based on themes from that time in history making the plays relevant in their times. But relevant themes and meanings change throughout history and cultures change, making the plays irrelevant in modern society.

When the teacher says, “we are going to learn about Shakespeare”, many people grunt and sigh and chatter. These students are complaining about how they do not want to learn about William Shakespeare. People can already feel the fact that Shakespeare is over idolised. His plays are not as important as the curriculum makes it seem. Some copies of the books and most websites have a translated version fo the text on the side of it just so people can understand what is going on, basically admitting that Shakespeare plays are nearly impossible to understand and we need help just to read the plays. Therefore we should be reading something we can understand.

Shakespeare plays were written nearly 400 years ago. The culture of the world has changed. People no longer commit suicide when sad their love interest cannot see them (in Romeo and Juliet). People no longer talk like they did when depicted in the plays written by William Shakespeare. After many years of learning proper English, we are introduced to plays by William Shakespeare where all the characters are butchering English. Some people say we can learn from reading Shakespeare plays as they are good at showing us the past and we can learn from the lessons. This is not true, as we learn about things such as World War 1 and World War 2 because we made mistakes and we can learn from them and improve ourselves and the world. But reading Shakespeare plays we don’t read them to not make the same mistakes he did, it is teaching us about love that doesn’t work as it used to and lessons such as kill yourself when you are sad.

The world is changing all around us, we cannot continue to worship an old outdated play written by a man 400 years ago. His writing is no longer applicable to our modern society. The plays should be read in ones free time instead of pushing in a school curriculum. The plays do not teach us anything important unlike the world wars and are a waste of time for all who are forced to read and learn about it. The history and story of the books are interesting but that is it, it’s interesting, not useful, not helpful, just interesting to see how people acted or are depicted to act in the plays. Plays written by William Shakespeare are irrelevant and should be removed from the school curriculum.