Shakespeare is seen as one of the greatest play writers of all time in the English language but does this mean it should be taught in high schools. Shakespeare’s plays display aspects of life which relate to today such as messages, life lessons, themes such as love, hate, and revenge which are traits that can be our downfall and Shakespearean language that gets the reader thinking and understanding a different way of talking. But is it still relevant to teenage readers today?
Shakespeare includes themes in his plays such as love, greed, loyalty, revenge, jealousy, good and evil, appearance and reality and many more. In one of his well known plays Othello, a major theme is the appearance of a character compared to the reality of a character which leads to the destruction of a new marriage. For the character Iago to constantly get other characters to do as he wants be nudging them in the direction he wants but never once telling them exactly what to also applies to today's society where most teenagers have at least one form of social media where they communicate to others. Through the phone on display they may be an honest, kind and friendly person who appears to say and do all the right things whereas on the other side of the phone they are a deceitful, dishonest and manipulative person who uses others and ruins their lives to get what they want. This is exactly how Iago is displayed in the play Othello. He uses people as puppets and pulls the strings to get them to do what he wants but never once lets himself be seen for the actions of others and the puppet never gets to understand and think about the decisions they are making and the consequences of them because Iago places jealous into their minds which makes them blind to their own actions. By teenagers reading a play like Othello in school they see the way people can appear to be one way and see that it is really all just a facade and they are actually something else. So student ...