Jeff - your southern cross tattoo is showing. With respect, please stick with what you know: rugby league and speed cameras. Your suited entertainment is a group of knuckle dragging apes pounding each others heads for an hour. I don't think any blogger today is going to make you a convert. If you don't think phrases like this from Julius Caesar are currently relevant, best stick with Matthew Johns as high "art": "Let me have men about me that are fat; Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o' nights. Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look; He thinks too much: such men are dangerous."

"...it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." Shakespeare's works form part of the core Western cultural tradition - up there with the Bible - with no knowledge of either a significant portion of modern literature/ film/ television/ etc will be missed. It's bad enough as it is - most people don't even get the obvious retellings, eg: "Ten things I hate about you" as a reimagined "Taming of the shrew". If you don't know your Shakespeare, everything from teen comedy cinema, to Star Trek, to my blogging rants will go over your head. I'll leave you with Robert Heinlein's approach to education, which I endorse 100%: "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." Remember Jeff - "..self love...is not so great a sin as self-neglect." - Henry V.

Jeff, i agree no relevance what so ever to anybody. me thinks poyo does protest too much.

I rarely disagree with you JC but i have somewhat of an appreciation for shakespeare and i dont have any style or culture of any kind. its just beautiful language that is a pleasure to hear or speak. its a shame our modern australian language is so lazy and ordinary.

I cannot believe that you do not see any relevance to Shakespeare's plays. I guess we really don't have leaders that betray one another and their people, we don't have deception, love, hate, family loyalties, murder etc in our society anymore. Macbeth, Much Ado About Nothing, King Lear, Hamlet... all a waste of time in Jeff land. You write about themes such as the ones above in your column all the time. Perhaps you should watch the Australian version of Macbeth - stars Sam Worthington, it is pretty good.

Nah Jeff, it's definitely you.

Scott - "pitch manure" - I think you have that one down to a fine art.

If Bill Rattlesword was alive today, he'd probably be writing scripts for "The Bill" or for action movies starring Eddie Murphy and Sigourney Weaver. Apart from the language (which is interesting in itself) the plays are all good yarns. It's a great way for young people to be exposed to a whole different world and explore a range of concepts and arguments around the events and characters. I remember being at school and thinking why I saw Hamlet's motivations different from everyone else. It shows how relevant it is how all of the plays can be re-worked and modernised in new settings and still be a good yarn.

oh dear, it didnt take too long before the totalitarian solution came to light- for people who chose to think and talk differently? I thought the ability to understand any form of puzzle -(language or other) was about learning and exercising the skills to decipher them? But if we only have to make choices based on media adds and movie language -who needs to learn to think about different ways of communicating - new and old?

outdate Shakespeare for Jeff? Why not. "To choko, or not to choko: that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The spinning bicycle wheel and exposure of outrageous muffin-tops, Or to take arms against a sea of free beer at a brothel..."