I haven't read Shakespeare since high school, and I was worried I wouldn't be able to get much out of it. But the play and the supplemental content in the Signet edition proved to be both accessible and insightful.

My main reason for approaching Shakespeare was to find some explanation for 'the bard's' persistent presence in the academic study of literature. Why do so many readers still take time for this work?

From what I've read, inferred, and understood thus far, I believe Shakespeare's lingering impact is the result of a combinations of literary, poetic, and historical factors.

Literary in that the plays can still speak to life complexities, human condition etc., Poetic in that the verse and the prose both throw open wide the doors of language - I would imagine John Updike an adamant Shakespeare fan - and Historical in that Shakespeare was a pioneer of litarary realism while his contemporaries were mostly writers of morality plays and plays of state exaltation.