Re: Shakespeare? who is he anyway?
"If even 5% of El Reg readership, or even the general public, could name the play from which these now-everyday quotes are taken I'll eat my hat." --- BloodBeastTerror
I think you might be underestimating the commentardariat. The plays are not incomprehensible - watch Baz Lurman's film "Shakespeares Romeo and Juliet" and tell me you don't understand it. Sure some people use their knowledge of Shakespeare to show off, but that doesn't mean that others don't enjoy it.
The real flaw in your premise is that it doesn't imply any valid conclusions. 95% of the El Reg readership, or the general public, couldn't name all the bones in a horse; all the particles in the Symmetric Theory; all the storage array technologies; the artists of the Precisionist school; the key mineral bearing ores; the human oncogenes responsible for most cancers; etc. etc. Does it mean that nobody should know this stuff? If we consider useful knowledge to be restricted to that which 95% of people know, eventually nobody would know anything (although civilisation would have ceased long before that point).
Biting the hand that feeds IT
