A Modern Reading List for High School?

[John Cole]

I think we were both shocked. No insult intended, and I would have attempted to answer your questions if I thought you were asking questions. Instead, I believed your questions to be statements disguised as questions.

I'm also not sure what you mean by "relevant." Here's a challenge: read King Lear and then see if you can tell me what's "relevant" about the play. In fact, you don't even have to read. Watch a good version of the play. Then you may wonder why the play was performed for two hundred years with a happy ending.

Also, the English language would get along just fine without Shakespeare although it may lack a few of the words Shakespeare coined.

When you read Shakespeare's plays, you learn about Shakespeare's plays. I'm not going to make any grandiose claims and say that reading Hamlet will make you a better person or provide a moral education. But you will know something about Hamlet, and if you take the time to work through its complexities (and I don't mean the language), it can be very rewarding.