Why Shakespeare?

Recently in class we have been reading a lot of poems. And as a result, Shakespeare is a recurring author in our class for both poems and plays. As an English major, I feel contractually obligated to like Shakespeare in some sense; I mean, the playwright is probably going to be referenced in almost every class I take or teach, so I might as well make the best of it while I can. That being said, I have to wonder why he is so popular. What is it about Shakespeare that make people want to recite his works repeatedly all over the world? While it could be argued that the themes in Shakespeare's works are what make him so popular (and rightfully so) many other literary works contain similar themes, and there are many authors that deserve the same praise that the Bard receives. Take JK Rowling for example. The Author of the Harry Potter series is one of the world's wealthiest people, and millions of people have bought the books that give them an escape into a magical wizarding world. Or, another one of the 21st century's writers, John Green. He is the author of The Fault in Our Stars, Looking for Alaska, Paper Towns, An Abundance of Catherines, and co-author of Let it Snow among other works, has had astronomical success with his writing. The Fault in Our Stars and Paper Towns have both been made into phenomenal movies, and Looking for Alaska and  Let it Snow have been made into Hulu TV series and a Netflix movie respectfully. He has sold tons of merchandise, and he runs an extremely popular YouTube channel with his brother Hank, where they help to raise a lot of money for charities (it's really cool- if you want to check out their channel it's called Vlogbrothers). While I'm not saying that Shakespeare doesn't deserve the recognition he receives for his (or maybe not his) works, I am saying that maybe its time for more modern authors like John Green to make it onto The Canon in this day and age. I mean how many times can a person read Hamlet?