Keywords: ‘To what extent …?’ and ‘still relevant’.
• Shakespeare keeps the reader/listener engaged: explores pertinent issues: challenges thoughts/opinions: plot, characters and themes are cleverly interwoven: emerging themes and ideas are timeless
• human flaws/faults, dilemmas and relationships transcend time
• characters being human is fallible, e.g. Macbeth being too ambitious and Hamlet struggling to come to terms with the death of his father
• love, friendship, betrayal and vengeance are timeless themes
• a voice is given to those marginalised in society, e.g. females in the later sixteenth/early seventeenth century
• the enrichment of the English language, e.g. Shakespeare is the most quoted author in the Oxford dictionary
• examples: ‘all’s well that ends well’, ‘the world is my oyster’ and ‘parting is such sweet sorrow’
• the entertainment value and range of subject matter, e.g. war, religious conflict, racial prejudice, class division