Shakespeare in American Life

STEPHEN GREENBLATT: Shakespeare occupies a weirdly anomalous place, as your whole program suggests, in American consciousness, in American education. So, however much at certain anxious moments people are saying "What? They don't want to teach Shakespeare any longer?", that was never really the issue, however much you may find people who were attacking Shakespeare, or defending Shakespeare as if he were under attack.

Shakespeare has been and remains immensely strong and central to an American literary education, and not simply literary education, but as your show suggests, to popular culture, to a huge, broad sweep of American culture and that is, after all, what you are addressing.