He was certainly popular culture in his day, and his theater—as the source of entertainment, news, and gossip where average folks rubbed both literal and metaphorical elbows with their supposed betters—was the equivalent of our modern internet. Shakespeare, opera, and symphonies were popular entertainments for all levels of society until about the 19th century, when dress codes, tiered ticket prices, and separate entrances for the wealthy and the working class began to enforce the notion that these art forms were elitist and highbrow, and audiences were expected to conform to a polite decorum far different from the rowdy madhouse of Shakespeare’s inn yards and playhouses. Shakespeare’s popular reputation might well have begun to change as early as 1623, seven years after his death, when the publication of the First Folio designated his “Plays” as the loftier “Works,” two words that seem interchangeable now but carried important value distinctions then.
I’ve written about how I yell “drink!” every time I hear Shakespeare referenced or quoted, and I end up yelling it a lot (especially when listening to Taylor Swift). Shakespeare’s themes, language, and characters are everywhere, providing inspiration, intellectual heft, artistic credibility, and source material for novels, parodies, musicals, sitcoms, and award-winning films. I’m chronicling less the intersection of Shakespeare and popular culture and more a Venn diagram that’s a single circle.
That circle includes film, arguably the world’s most popular medium, for which Shakespeare is credited as a writer of almost 2,000 movies and TV shows on the Internet Movie Database (a figure that was closer to 1,500 when I last checked in 2020), making him the most-filmed author in history. Adaptations of his plays include Laurence Olivier’s 1955 version of Richard III, whose iconic designs and characterizations can be seen in everything from Monty Python and the Holy Grailto Shrek; both the 1968 and 1996 film versions of Romeo and Julietfrom directors Franco Zeffirelli and Baz Luhrmann; and Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth starring Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand.
Dozens (probably hundreds) of hugely popular films exist where Shakespeare isn’t a credited writer but remains an inspiration. 2025’s Hamnet, based on Maggie O’Farrell’s acclaimed novel, won the Best Actress Oscar for Jessie Buckley and both BAFTA and Golden Globe Awards for Best Film. (Elsinore,a Shakespeare-related film opening this month, is also receiving early award buzz.) Classics like The Lion King, in both its animated and photo-realistic versions, which is famously based on Hamlet(and less famously informed by both parts of Henry IV); the double-header of Barbieand Oppenheimer, which opened on the same day in 2023 and split King Lear(like the atom) in two; 1942’s To Be or Not To Be, about a Polish theater troupe using Shakespearean language and techniques to outwit the Nazis; Ghostlightand Sing Sing (from 2024), which each dramatize how theater generally and Shakespeare specifically can be a source of healing and power; and of course Shakespeare in Love, the 1999 Best Picture Oscar winner that delightfully satisfies the romcom expectations of the audience while also shattering the myth of Shakespeare as an isolated genius.
Then there are superhero movies, which share Shakespearean themes and—as some of the most popular and financially successful films in history—remind us that Shakespeare himself was also a highly popular, incredibly commercial, market-driven storyteller. In 2025’s Superman, writer/director James Gunn draws on his experience adapting Romeo and Julietin 1996 to create a character who embodies the values Sir Thomas More espouses in “The Stranger’s Case,” and a supporting cast of characters that resemble the mechanicals in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. 2022’s The Batman leans hard into the brooding, vengeful character’s resemblance to Hamlet, as does (even more strongly) the 2019 Best Picture Oscar nominee Black Panther,in which Prince T’Challa of Wakanda also wrestles with complicated feelings of duty, fights off threats to his kingdom from a family member, and visits with the ghost of his assassinated father. Black Panther is part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which includes the streaming series WandaVision and Wonder Man, two of the MCU’s most critically acclaimed entries that play Shakespearean games with genre expectations and questions of identity and are love letters to Shakespeare, theater, and television itself.
TV’s been in love for decades with, not just heroes, but anti-heroes like Tony Soprano, Vic Mackey in The Shield,Don Draper in Mad Men,and Walter White in Breaking Bad—all of whom are direct descendants of Shakespeare’s original anti-hero, Richard III (whose machinations and direct-address forthrightness can be seen in series ranging from House of Cardsto Fleabag). Fittingly, when Olivier’s film premiered in the US in 1956, it did so in cinemas and at the same time on television, where an estimated 25 to 40 million people watched it for free, a number probably greater than all the people who’d seen the play onstage since its premiere in the late 16th century.
TV shows still draw inspiration from Shakespeare: the Shakespearean strands in the DNA of Star Trek are well documented; Deadwood examines actual historical figures through a Shakespearean lens using a blend of common invective and iambic pentameter; The Crown is our own Elizabethan history play inspired by Shakespeare’s history plays (written during his Elizabethan era) that chronicle the Wars of the Roses; Succession is inspired by Shakespeare’s histories and King Lear; the first two seasons of White Lotus have both The Tempest and As You Like It baked into their tone and thematic richness; the couple at the center of Better Call Saul bear a close resemblance to Lady Macbeth and her husband; Ted Lasso calls to mind Shakespeare’s rude mechanicals cavorting in the green world…excuse me, on the football pitch, while learning that “sweet are the uses of adversity;” and both Station Eleven and Game of Thrones are based on popular novels that depict a traveling theater troupe (in the former) performing Shakespeare as a way to survive a global apocalypse, and in the latter, a dynastic struggle for power based on Shakespeare’s four history plays (the three parts of Henry VI plus Richard III) that chronicle the Wars of the Roses. In a fascinating full circle of influence, the success and popularity of Game Of Thrones—which, again, is based on Shakespeare—inspired the BBC to produce The Hollow Crown, a massive and star-studded television adaptation of the eight history plays that comprise Shakespeare’s Henriad (Richard II,both parts of Henry IV, Henry V, all three parts of Henry VI,and Richard III).
I’m not alone in observing how intrinsically Shakespearean our culture is. The New York Times recently published its list of the “100 Best TV Shows of the 21st Century,” and Sarah Spring, creator of the social media account Shakespeare Made Clear, breaks down here how Shakespeare’s “plays continue to inspire new generations of artists to create new generations of masterpieces.”
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There are dozens of popular Broadway musicals based on Shakespeare’s plays, inspired by his life, or (in the case of Wicked) in conversation with his themes. And the number of popular bestselling novels inspired by Shakespeare must reach into the thousands, including several that I’ve written about before: Nicole Galland’s Boy (a coming-of-age story about Shakespeare’s boy actor Alexander Cooke) and I, Iago (which gives the villain of Othello a surprisingly sympathetic backstory); Christopher Moore’s Pocket trilogy, which chronicles the bawdy misadventures of the Fool from King Lear; Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, which depicts the surprising influence of Shakespeare on gaming culture; and Robert B. Parker’s detective novels featuring Boston private investigator Spenser (“with an s like the English poet”). “Shakespeare is a pervasive presence in detective fiction,” writes Lisa Hopkins in the introduction to her book Shakespearean Allusion in Crime Fiction: DCI Shakespeare, and I’d add he’s a pervasive presence in all narrative fiction in every genre and medium.
Shakespeare’s so solidly popular culture that people quote him every day, usually without even knowing it, because he popularized or flat-out invented over 1700 words and phrases we still use today. On Amy Poehler’s Good Hang podcast just last month, Paul McCartney joked about the lyrics of some contemporary pop songs, causing Amy to tease the man who sang “She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah” by saying that he “doth protest,” a partial quote from Hamlet.Amy left “too much” unsaid but you better believe I yelled “drink!” when I heard it.
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Acclaimed actors and real-life spouses Brian Cox and Nicole Ansari-Cox share stories from their extraordinary careers on stage and screen, from King Lear and Successionto their current roles as Johann Sebastian and Anna Magdalena Bach.
Colman Domingo on the Power of Theater
Actor Colman Domingo takes us behind the scenes of the making of his new film, Sing Sing, the inspiring true story of the Rehabilitation Through the Arts program at the maximum security prison.
Shakespeare and Stephen King, with Caroline Bicks
When scholar and Everyday Shakespeare host Caroline Bicks gained unprecedented access to Stephen King’s personal archives, she discovered that the Bard of Avon and the King of Horror have more in common than you might think.
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