Cambridge University alters syllabus and puts the Bard’s works

Such talk is nonsensical according to Dr Ann Barton, fellow of Trinity College. She said, "If the Shakespeare paper is made a compulsory part of the renaissance paper, it’s not the end of the world. In fact, I think there’s a good deal to be said for putting him in the context of contemporary literature, both dramatic and non-dramatic."

John Carey, Merton professor of English literature at Oxford University, who supports a compulsory paper on Shakespeare explains why the bard is essential reading: "Shakespeare seems to be the one writer who everyone who comes afterwards has read. All the writers after him have read, learned, allude to, react against him. So, unless you know your Shakespeare, you don’t read post-Shakespeare literature properly."

But, the abstruse academic discussion about whether this means he must have a paper all to himself and that students of literature must read the "whole canon" (which apparently they do not do) is just another chapter in a 20-year-old debate about what makes for a well rounded English syllabus. Whether Cambridge alters its syllabus or not, is not the point.

Dr Russell Jackson, deputy director of the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-on-Avon, confirms this. He said: "I don’t think such a move would lessen the popularity of Shakespeare. Interest remains as high as ever." He is alive and well in Britain.

The fact is, whether the Bard has a paper all to himself or not his position in British culture is not easily "down graded" or "demoted". Studying him alongside Thomas Kyd, John Lyly, Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Middleton and John Dryden does not diminish him. Outside of academia he is a bit of an industry. He helps the town of Stratford-on-Avon survive, appears on bank notes on tea towels, as a hologram on credit cards, on television, in everyday speech and is still playing to packed audiences on stage and on screen.

So much so it is nearly impossible to buy tickets to see any of this season’s productions of his plays. At the new-old Globe Theatre in Southwark, where Vanessa Redgrave is playing Prospero in a production of Tempest, tickets were sold out in advance of its opening earlier this month. Its the same story at the vast discarded Gainsborough film studio in east London where the actor Ralph Fiennes plays the part of Richard II to an audience of thousands spanning age groups, and starting tomorrow will play Coriolanus.

And as ever the Bard proves he is a man for all seasons and tastes. For those with no stomach for three hours of high drama in iambic pentameter the Reduced Shakespeare Company has a 97-minute rendition of `The Complete Works of Shakespeare (Abridged)’. The show, a spoof Shakespeare that appears to be sending up its audience’s TV style attention span as much as it does the Bard, has become one of the longest running West End shows, now into its fifth year.

Purists may scoff at the idea, but the fact that a Complete Works Christopher Marlowe or Arthur Miller or any one else, does not have the same ring and would certainly not pull in the punters.