Introduction: Great creating Shakespeare

[Extract] Four hundred years on from the beginning of one of the strongest of all artistic legacies, we – artists, writers, performers and readers – continue to create and re-create Shakespeare. Why? Some explanations are obvious: the sheer unmatched eloquence of the writing; the cultural prestige of the works in many parts of the world; the sticking quality – the memorableness – of Shakespeare’s stories, characters and incidents; the intellectual adventurousness and range of the plays; their refusal of oversimplification. All of these are reasons for Shakespeare’s influence on numberless poets, novelists, dramatists, composers, painters, directors, filmmakers and performers.