Analytical essay on "Why Read Shakespeare"

3.J 11/1 – 2012 Why do we still read Shakespeare?

Navigating in life is a complexity, which most people, at some point, find difficult. Where does one belong, what path are we supposed to follow and to where does it lead? – These are questions that we tend to ask ourselves, without knowing the answer. Literature is a way of expressing feelings and opinions and literature often reflects the world through the eyes of the writer. Shakespeare was an artist, who had the ability to create literature and acts that focuses on the complexity of navigating in life. This is one of the reasons he is one of the most interesting artists in history, and the reason why the topic “Why do we still read Shakespeare?” appeared on Yahoo!’s website as recently as on January 7 “Why do we still read Shakespeare?” is a non-fictive text found on one of Yahoo!’s forums. The question ‘why do we still read Shakespeare’ was raised by Lucy and answered by Dr. Mick.

These nicknames are representing people having interest in the subject, in this case Shakespeare. Since the text is found on the internet, more specific a forum (where you and I can participate), it is needed to be very critical about the content. Through a wider research, I found out that the actual response (the given text) is not from a random, anonymous user of the Yahoo!-forum, nor from any other forum, but is an extract from a speech held for study reasons. The speech was held in front of a thousand college students by Michael Mack, Director of Universe Honors Program and a professor in English . This is also revealed in the sentence “(…) certainly worthy subjects to study in college.” (3 stanza) The reason I’m pointing this out is that the value of the text seem different as the author changes from an internet-forum-user to the authoritarian appearance of a professor of English. This makes the source much more reliable and the value way higher, because of the fact, that we know, for sure, the professor has an education to support his statements.

Thereby there’s no doubt who the receivers would be based on the original source, but to focus on the actual given text, the receiver is not so different.