Why study Shakespeare?
I'm not a complete Shakespeare nut. I don't argue that he's the greatest writer ever to have lived (that spot is reserved for Tolstoy; I haven't decided on the best playwright, but my favourite is most definitely Anouilh, and my favourite poet is Dylan Thomas), and neither do I believe he should be studied to the point of excluding almost every other English writer - give us a break and let us read some Spenser or Milton ( Paradise Lost can be pretty hard to get through if you're not well versed in the Bible, but it's worth it). However, saying that Shakespeare is bad is on a whole other level of wrongness; Shakespeare's writing is many things to many people, but it's not bad - not even by the standards of other great literature, and not even by the standards of his contemporaries. His works have survived and etched themselves into our literary consciousness; can you say the same for, say, Marlowe? Unless you study English Literature beyond GCSE level ...