irectors and wiser than most of his critics." A July 6, 1998, article in Time chronicles numerous recent stage productions in the United States and Great Britain, including prominent productions of Macbeth, Hamlet, Twelfth Night, Romeo and Juliet, Cymbeline, and an evening of short plays, written by contemporary playwrights and inspired by Shakespeare's sonnets, entitled Love's Fire. The article notes, "Shakespeare is enjoying a good season," but the 1998 theater schedule is not a dramatic departure from most international seasons: Shakespeare has usually been a prominent part of the plans for most years.
While Shakespeare has been important to the theater plans of most eras, he has had an especially strong voice in the later years of the 20th century, in part because of the similarities between his own time and the present. He wrote his plays at the end of a critical historical era: "The Renaissance (ca. 1350-1600) ushered out the Middle Ages and set the stage for the emergence of the modern world." The societal and cultural innovations that
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