Why is Shakespeare so pretentious?

Something I will never understand is how Shakespeare has become something that seems really intellectual and pretentious, when it was literally written for the masses. Scholars love him and his plays, I’ve studied him for years now, but that’s no reason for his plays to be seen as stuffy and boring. Personally, I think Shakespeare fans have a lot to answer for in making people dislike Shakespeare’s plays.

Way back in Elizabethan/Jacobean London Shakespeare was writing his many plays for a mass audience; everyone went to The Globe to see the newest play. There are even reports that the groundlings (those who had the cheap standing tickets) got quite rowdy, throwing food and the like around. This image is almost opposite to the modern idea of a Shakespeare fan. Nowadays if you were asked to describe a Shakespeare fan, I bet you’d describe someone at least middle aged, middle class, a bit snobby… When did that change?

Personally, I watched a BBC adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew yesterday, and honestly, I didn’t enjoy it. To me it just seemed like an entirely sexist plot where women are seen as amenities, and Kate is deprived of sleep and essentially tortured until she breaks and begins acting in a way suitable for a ‘good’ wife. I know it’s ‘of its time’, however watching it in the 21st century it felt a bit uncomfortable. That being said, once you get past the old-fashioned language the plays have fairly simple plots. Take Romeo and Juliet, for example, Shakespeare’s most well-known play, the story of two star-crossed lovers from feuding families in Verona. The whole plot is essentially as follows: Romeo and Juliet meet and fall in love despite being from feuding families, their families fight a bit, some of their friends die (RIP Mercutio), the lovers want to get married so try to run away, the plan gets a bit messed up with some miscommunications, and finally they end up committing suicide. The end. Obviously, there are nuances and I have overly simplified the plot here, however that is the gist of Shakespeare’s most famous play. So, if the plays are actually fairly simple, why then are they seen as so intellectual and boring?

Without insulting my teachers/lecturers, I think a lot of this comes from how Shakespeare is taught to us. Don’t get me wrong most of my English teachers/lecturers have been great, but nationally we’ve put Shakespeare on such a pedestal, which is only enforced by the teaching of his work as highly intellectual and important.

However, the most enjoyable experience of Shakespeare I’ve had was at The Globe Theatre in the summer of 2019, a friend and I got £5 standing tickets to see A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which has been my favourite Shakespeare play since I started reading them. This adaptation was completely mad, I highly recommend watching the YouTube trailer to get an idea of the insane adaptation, it was mad but in the best way. The fact that this crazy interpretation is the most enjoyable of the Shakespeare plays I’ve seen thus far, perhaps suggests that the pretentiousness of the plays almost hinders an audience’s enjoyment of the play. When that pretentiousness was stripped away, what was left was a great story, great actors, a cool theatre, and therefore a brilliant experience, that was greatly enjoyed by both myself, a self-confessed literature nerd, and the friend I went with, who hasn’t studied English since GCSEs.

On the whole, in my opinion Shakespeare fans have made his plays seem too pretentious thus making them less accessible to most people who don’t want to study his plays but perhaps just want to see a fun play occasionally. Ultimately, Shakespeare didn’t write his many plays to be viewed as high literature, rather writing them for the masses, therefore there is no reason for this level of pretentiousness around enjoying Shakespeare.