How did Shakespeare influence modern culture? Have you ever heard of William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet or Hamlet? Have you heard or seen the famous line from Hamlet's soliloquy "To be or not to be"? Chances are you have. Although William Shakespeare was born in the mid-1500s, he is known as one of the most influential people in modern culture because his works are very common today and relate to today's culture. Some of his early works, such as plays and poems, helped shape films, books, and the way we read and write today. William Shakespeare was born on April 23, 1564 in England. According to Funk and Wagnall's New Encyclopedia, Shakespeare as a boy most likely studied at a local high school where he grew up. He has since expanded ideas on many things that were not really discussed during his time and have been addressed hundreds of years later, and may not even be resolved in some parts of the world today. In plays like Macbeth they had the role of a female character who was one of the protagonists and in Othello they had the lead role of an African American. It also created hundreds and thousands of new words, phrases, and expressions that are commonly found today. He formed words, according to the Academy of American Poets, by combining Latin, French and Native roots. His impressive expansion of the English language, according to the Oxford Dictionary, created words like birthplace, bloodsucker, under and leapfrog, to name a few. Some of these social issues from Shakespeare's time that appear in the plays - class division, racism, sexuality, the role and status of women, crime, war, death - are still ongoing issues in today's dysfunctional global society (" Shakespeare : our contemporary?” 1). These problems arose in Macbeth when one of the main characters was Lady Macbeth who is a woman. Women did not have the rights they have today and were usually stay-at-home parents who cleaned all day , when he put a woman in the main cast and had a really big role in getting Macbeth to kill in the play, it raised a lot of questions during its time Another example of this would be another famous play by Shakespeare called Othello in which there was a black character who was criticized for being in an all white town. Shakespeare was probably called crazy multiple times for doing this. Shakespeare's language and themes that he used are still relatable today because we are dealing with the same ones issues such as equal rights, murder and