Shakespeare in popular "world" culture

There are many ways to approach Shakespeare’s presence. For decades, many of us have been trying to understand: why Shakespeare?

Islam Issa

Professor of Literature and History

View Author ->

Islam Issa

Professor of Literature and History

02 Sept 2025

Key Points

Education systems and cultural hierarchy are factors that have contributed to Shakespeare’s status as a global phenomenon.
Shakespeare’s plays have a certain simplicity in structure and language, which also facilitates their translation.
Representations of the Other reveal perceptions of the so-called Other during Shakespeare’s time, while offering an opportunity to understand the reactions of different communities today to those texts.

A global phenomenon

Photo by berm_teerawat

There are many ways to approach Shakespeare’s presence. We can start by saying that Shakespeare’s a phenomenon. We don’t quite know why. For decades, many of us have been trying to understand: why Shakespeare? Certain things come to mind. The education system, one could say, imposes Shakespeare. Cultural hierarchy, in some ways, imposes Shakespeare.

For example, think of Romeo and Juliet. Many people have called Layla and Majnun, which is a similar story, the Romeo and Juliet of the East. Yet this story was written hundreds of years before Romeo and Juliet. So there’s no doubt that a cultural hierarchy exists. Shakespeare has a special status. Shakespeare is one of the most popular and respected writers around the world.

Simplicity in Shakespeare

Shakespeare’s plays have a certain simplicity. They almost have a three-stage structure: Romeo and Juliet fall in love; Romeo and Juliet try to be together; Romeo and Juliet die. We can, in a way, simplify Shakespeare to those beginnings, middles and ends, but even more fascinating, and one of the reasons why the translation of Shakespeare is possible, is the simplicity of the language.

For example, at the beginning of Othello, Othello’s supposed friend Iago is going to trick him into thinking that his wife, Desdemona, is cheating on him. In the first scene, Iago turns to the audience and says, ‘I am not what I am.’ It’s a simple phrase, one that a child would understand. What he’s saying is: he thinks I’m his friend, but I’m not. He thinks he can trust me, but he shouldn’t.

But that simplicity in Shakespeare does so much more than develop the plot or develop the characters. It’s telling us more about Iago. Who says, ‘I am that I am’? It’s Jehovah; it’s God by the burning bush in the Old Testament. Iago is telling us that he’s sacrilegious. ‘I am not what I am.’ He’s going against divine will. He’s going against how humans are supposed to be with one another. Moreover, no actor who stands on the stage and says, ‘I am not what I am’ is lying – because they’re actors. That’s the simplicity of Shakespeare, but it’s the simplicity that lends itself to so much more.

Asking the big questions

In The Tempest, Miranda is stranded on an island with her father, and for the first time, she sees a human who’s not her father or Caliban, the inhabitant of the island. She sees Ferdinand, whom she will eventually wed. When she looks at him, she asks, ‘What is it?’ It’s a very simple question. Each word is monosyllabic. She’s saying: I haven’t seen something like that before. The only human I’ve seen is my father. What is it?

But she’s also showing her wonder. “Miranda” comes from the word to wonder; she has a sense of wonderment. What is it? She’s also asking the questions of the Renaissance, the biggest questions that Shakespeare, through his simplicity, is making us ask. What is life? What is love? What is scripture? What is science? These are the biggest questions of life, and these are the questions that Shakespeare’s simplicity is alluding to.

Memorable quotes, scenes and characters

Photo by Claudio Divizia

Popular culture has an emphasis on some of the most memorable things in Shakespeare. These are quotes, scenes and characters. Think of a character like Romeo and the influence he’s had on popular culture. Say the word “Romeo” anywhere around the world, and people will have some impression of what it is, which might not even be true. It can often be a man who has many female acquaintances, whereas Romeo probably does not represent that.

Or we think of a scene like the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet, which is an ingrained part of popular culture around the world. When we think of balconies, they represent so much. A balcony can represent something unreachable. In many cultures, people fall in love across the balconies, talk to one another across the balconies. During the coronavirus pandemic, we’ve seen the importance of balconies. The balcony scene is a scene in popular culture that stays in people’s minds. There are famous quotes as well: ‘to be or not to be’ has been used by people over history in every language to the extent that sometimes we forget it’s a Shakespeare phrase.

Continuing Shakespeare’s legacy

I read Shakespeare in many ways as a businessman. I don’t think it’s a bad thing to say. The Romantics, for example, would have us believe that Shakespeare sat contemplatively thinking of the next inspiring, prophetic thing to write, but Shakespeare was also aware of what his audience wanted. That’s why he provided them with exotic locations, fascinating characters and violence. So if we continue that today, then are we not continuing that legacy that Shakespeare created?

That can mean adapting, and perhaps even appropriating. It can mean modernising. Shakespeare’s themes can speak to our present concerns, and performance can change certain aspects. There is that fluidity and flexibility in Shakespeare. In many ways, traditionalists believe that Shakespeare has to be performed exactly the same way it was intended, but you get a lot out of Shakespeare when you adapt it to the concerns of that particular society, in that particular context and moment.

Representations of the Other

Photo by Igor Bulgarin

Over history, the concept of the Other has been important to people. It makes them feel better about themselves or gives them an excuse in how they treat those around them. In the case of renaissance drama, which Shakespeare represents to us today, the Other was seen as a fascinating aspect to have on the stage.

Shakespeare, let’s not forget, never left England; at least we have no evidence that he left England. So he’s relying on atlases, histories and his own imagination. He’s trying to send his audience on their own imaginative journey. That can often be problematic because there is such a thing as exoticising the Other and making the Other seem inferior. Critics like Edward Said advanced that with ideas of Orientalism: seeing the Orient as exotic and inferior, and almost fetishising it.

However, Shakespeare, in my view, was giving his audience something that they were attracted to. On one hand, that can help us understand the perceptions of the so-called Other at the time. On the other hand, it gives us the opportunity to see the reactions of those communities today to those texts. How are they reacting to that representation? Does it make them feel uncomfortable, or is there something about it that speaks to them? These ideas can keep Shakespeare morphing and continue his legacy even further.

Engaging with Shakespeare’s simplicity

Do we engage with Shakespeare’s simplicity at face value? Shakespeare has a simplicity, and it’s a welcome simplicity, but it’s down to the reader or the audience member to untangle that simplicity and see where that simplicity takes us. It might be to a further simple point or it might be to a different complication.

For example, The Merchant of Venice is recorded in Shakespeare’s First Folio as a comedy. People were expected to go and laugh during The Merchant of Venice. During Hitler’s first year as chancellor, there were tens of performances of The Merchant of Venice in Germany.

When Shylock, the Jewish merchant, asks, ‘If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh?’ I challenge you to put yourself in the mindset of a different reader. Imagine not just a reader of Shakespeare’s time who might laugh, but the reader of today who wants equality. Try to imagine how a Holocaust survivor would read those lines entirely differently.

Shakespeare’s simplicity invites us to respond. It invites us to interpretation, and these interpretations don’t falsify one another. These interpretations build a better sense of the possibilities of the literature, of all the different messages and all of the influences that this literature could have on the way we see ourselves and the world around us.