Murder, romance, and sex, what more could anyone want out of a book or play? Perhaps an actually coherent plot.
William Shakespeare supposedly redefined literature and theatre. How, one might ask? By making plays with excruciatingly long dialogue and worse plots. Provided that Shakespeare was wildly popular in Elizabethan Age, one must also consider that peasants mainly viewed his plays. Peasants were illiterate back then. Despite what popular reality TV shows would suggest, the 21st century has gotten at least a little bit more intelligent.
The most infamous example of Shakespeare butchery would be Romeo and Juliet. This play features a teenage girl falling in love with the guy who murdered her cousin. Romantic, is it not? Love, evidently, snuffs out common sense. The priest character suggests putting Juliet into a coma to trick her family into thinking she is dead. Then Romeo is supposed to sneak into Juliet’s family crypt and run away with her. Ignoring the fact that this is a terrible idea, the plan ultimately fails because no one told Romeo that Juliet did not actually die. This leads to Romeo just killing himself next to Juliet’s not-dead body.
At least he is already in a crypt.
Not only does Shakespeare makes love look insane, he also somehow makes the already-crazy idea of revenge even crazier. Hamlet shows an angsty teenager who wants to murder his uncle for marrying his widowed mother. Essentially, Hamlet’s father was murdered then his ghost proceeds to go to Hamlet and say, “hey, my brother kind of murdered me. Go kill him, okay?” Hamlet just goes along. It takes him six months to make an awful plan, which consist of staging a play based on the murder of his father. Somehow, this disaster of a plan works and his uncle freaks out. After stabbing his girlfriend’s father and talking to a skull, it all ends in a giant blood bath. Everyone is whom anyone is dead due to being shanked or poisoned.
What is worst is that Shakespeare forgot to write the events leading up to the ending. His solution? Have Hamlet fabricate a story about how he was kidnapped by pirates. This does nothing to contribute to the plot.
Shakespeare is still revered as an innovator of literature. He may have come up with some renowned phrases, but that does not justify the awfulness of his plot. It is a common belief that the way he wrote his dialogue is indicative of his mastery of the language. In reality, his writing style probably confused the patrons of his plays and thought he was deep.

Remember, this is the same era where men played women’s roles in plays.