It is not a big surprise that Shakespeare isn’t the biggest hit among our generation. Why? Maybe because some don’t like reading plays that have wicked English even the professors take a second to process, or because theatre isn’t really our thing anymore…

But is it only the theatre? It’s doubtful that half of us would go to a new movie production of Hamlet. I mean, we all know who dies at the end, don’t we? We may need a crazy plot twist in the movie, or an all-star cast that each have at least one Oscar and an Emmy. But all those big-shot actors are also not very interested in theatre anymore. Then what’s in Shakespeare that makes it appealing to a very small number of people nowadays.

Yes, we’ve talked about that ancient English that we first had to read with dictionaries in our hands or the theatre. Oh, we didn’t exactly talk about that! What’s wrong with seeing plays? Why do some roll their eyes at the idea of sitting through almost 150 minutes of immaculate acting produced with hard work? Is it the length of it? Or maybe we, as a generation, didn’t really grow up with the theatre culture. I mean, there are only a handful of us that went to see plays once every few months, or even years. It may seem like a task. Getting out of the house, putting on semi-nice clothing, driving all the way to the theatre, sitting through two and a half hours of tragedy, and driving all the way back. Well, that is kind of similar to what one would do to see a movie, but that’s not even that popular nowadays, is it? Why get out of bed when you have the comfort of your own bed waiting for you and some new streaming service featuring films you might have missed four years ago?

But what happens when we stop going to these stage productions or never pick up the plays to read? Well, it doesn’t really harm us directly. But the most classical plays like Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, or The Comedy of Errors that have been playing on the stage all over the world for centuries become less and less common. I mean, they’ve been around for how many, four hundred years now? Why throw them away? They’re quite nice and fast to read if you wanted to… Or maybe a newer movie version is right in front of you on your TV. Or maybe the local theatre will earn a few extra bucks with the tickets you buy… It’s not really a change, but it’s something.