Comment on "Is Shakespeare Still Relevant?"

Although the essay "Is Shakespeare Still Relevant?", by Alexandra Petri, is easy to read, and full of the author's voice, it is seriously lacking direction. The first thing the author writes is about how if Shakespeare's play's were adapted today, they would have to replace the dialogue with words pertaining to poor cellular service. Her example may be good for a little humor, but it is not good for much more. From here, she quickly moves into other arguments about the Bard, leaving one wondering what angle she was trying to work with her first example. To her credit, it can be implied that she is trying to say that Shakespeare is not relevant because the prevalence of smartphones disconnects us from the works, it is not clear. Petri than makes the argument that we are disconnected from the works because we have to use tools like "No Fear Shakespeare" to understand them. She then goes on to claim that maybe he is famous simply because he is famous, not because of what he has to say. How she makes this claim is apparently left to the reader to find out, because Petri gives almost no concrete support for this claim. She simply states her claim, then in a conversational, yet pointed paragraph, describes how Shakespeare "beat out" other English writers as the most famous one. To wrap it all up, I would have absolutely no idea what Petri was arguing if it weren't for the title. Not once does she mention in her essay the word relevance.