Why study Shakespeare?

Few students will finish high school without having studied at least one Shakespeare play. They appear on almost every study design and every English teacher seems to have a favourite. Popular culture is still full of references to Shakespeare and you may recognise the plots of some of his plays from movies such as 10 Things I Hate About You and She’s the Man. Even after more than four hundred years, these plays are still universally appreciated, parodied and quoted. So, what makes them so good and why do we still need to study them in the 21st century?